Chapter Text
There was a sea of nothingness on the horizon, meeting a black sky— that was all that the scene before him could possibly be— and he was swimming through it— perhaps flying, it was hard to tell— as though searching for a glimpse of light, but there was simply no sun.
—
Unfortunately, Dazai woke up.
Again.
It was as if nothing could kill him— not disastrous heights, not a lack of oxygen, not toxins, not drugs. He didn’t even get close to dying this time, judging from the fact that he was still outside and not in a hospital. The only sign that there had been any change at all came from the graying clouds, which hadn’t even been hinted at in the blue skies that had been shining when he’d slit his wrists by the riverbank. Now, it looked like it was going to rain, but the drops never fell. The air smelt of something rotting.
His eyes blurred into focus when he heard what could only be music— faint trumpets and drums and whatever else bands were made up of. He wouldn’t know, his parents never let him take music classes. They always said it was a waste of time, but the longer he sat remembering, the louder the horns and cymbals clashed harmoniously.
Remembering? Now, since when in Hell did he remember things? Since when in God’s cruel afterlife did he reflect?
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to understand things, it was only human nature to want that, after all, but he didn’t care to think about his past. It just…. Well, it didn’t matter, really. He wasn’t going to waste time pitying himself. It simply wasn’t worth it.
The buildings around him loomed ever so normally. Good old Yokohama was still in order, and he could find nothing different.
Oh, yeah. Why the fuck was he awake? Why was everything so clear? He was certain that he’d lost more blood than that. After all, he’d passed out. He hadn’t tried doing so yet, but as he sat up, he knew something was especially wrong. Why wasn’t he weak?
His eyes widened as they glanced at his painless arms. His wrists weren't… they weren’t bleeding. There was no blood on the grass around him, and none dripped out of his body, even though the wounds were still open and deep.
And where in the name of Christ were his bandages? He’d noticed immediately that his pockets were empty, but he was finally letting it sink in, and it was… strange, to say the goddamn least. Was he robbed? Who would do that? He didn’t even have any money with him— just his damn bandages!
How…
He pulled himself out of his confusion. He had to think about this, whatever that meant. Problem was, he didn’t know where to start. His missing bandages? His missing blood? It was no surprise that his skin was pale, but it was like a sheet, a ghost.
And what about the music from the parade?
Well, there wasn’t supposed to be a parade that day. It wasn’t like anything special had happened. So, clearly, something had changed. Maybe he’d been out for longer than he thought, but surely someone would have noticed him if he was.
He wanted to ask someone. He knew that he needed people who actually knew what was going on if he was going to figure it out for himself. But, on that note, if the person he found became an enemy, or demanded information (not that he knew anything worthwhile), then everything could go wrong. Granted, nothing was right to begin with, but he’d like to choose the time and place of his battles, thank you very much. It would be exciting, it would be interesting, but he didn’t know enough to take the risk.
And there, like God had sent a devil, a man was walking away from the direction of the sounds coming from the parade— that is, in Dazai’s direction.
Fuck…
He was already sitting up, it wasn’t like he could play dead, which would’ve been his first instinct, so he pretended not to notice— that was his only option here, right? To go the other direction? He didn’t want anything to do with this person, so avoiding them was a first priority, that was for certain. There was, of course, the off chance that they knew something that could help him, but it wasn’t best to jump to risks when he didn’t have anything— or anyone— that could back him up. No clues, no weapons, no information.
The approaching man— boy? Was that a child?— kicked a rock, then looked up. Upon making eye contact with Dazai, he seemed to burrow his face into his jacket and stuff his hands even further into his pockets.
Seeing the winter coat that the kid wore made Dazai realize that no winds blew, and the air felt almost stale. It was as if there was no weather at all, and time seemed to freeze for a moment when he stood still in shock.
Where…?
The kid, who was only a short distance away from Dazai now, finally spoke. “Uh, hello. Is your name Dazai Osamu?”
Dazai only blinked, and when the other only blinked back, he noticed that the boy’s eyes were incredibly surreal— they seemed to be yellow outlined with purple, but that couldn’t be right.
The boy cleared his throat. “My name is Nakajima Atsushi,” he said, and though he shook, his voice did not quiver. “I’m here to introduce you to… everything.”
Dazai huffed. “Oh, what a savior.”
The kid— Nakajima— looked up in surprise. “Thank you,” he said with a faint furrow of his eyebrows, as though unsure whether he was being mocked or praised, then spoke routinely once more. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions. My job is to guide you through your first day in the afterlife. Now—”
“The afterlife?”
“Uh, yes. Sorry, I didn’t mention that,” he grumbled, mostly to himself, judging by the way he glared at the ground and fidgeted. “So—”
“That would mean I’m dead, then.” Dazai tried to hide his disappointment.
“Yes.”
He couldn't help but mumble, “I expected more from death.” Dazai had expected calm stillness, an ocean of deep breaths and peace. He expected not to think, not to feel, not to live. He knew he deserved the afterlife that he wound up in, but was it wrong to hope for more?
A voice told him that it was.
He sighed. “So, Nakajima, tell me everything.”
“Uh, right. You can just call me Atsushi, though. And, before I do that, I need confirmation of your death date. Let me know if this is a touchy conversation, and I’ll send you to the higher-ups instead. If you don’t know, that’s okay, it's… well, we’ll take care of it.”
He had to think about that one. Before he had died, he had been losing track of time and, well, everything else in life, too. Every day was the same. He couldn’t shake any strange sense of guilt when he was alive, no matter how many hours and days he devoted to ignoring it. “July… thirteenth,” he finally said.
Atsushi gave him a friendly smile that wasn’t even close to reaching his eyes. Though the expression on his face was clearly false, Dazai couldn't really blame him. He couldn’t find it in his heart to do so, and he didn’t want to think about why. Maybe he pitied him; after all, the kid seemed filled with anxiety. “Thank you.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And I’m sorry about that, it’s just— we’re required to ask that, and—”
“No, no, I get it.” Dazai stretched his arms. “So, tell me, Atsushi, what’s with that parade?”
The white-haired kid sighed. “That's the one thing I don’t know. They said that they would tell me on my last day— God only knows what that means.”
The kid, Dazai noticed, was a stressed wreck of a dead man. He acted like there was something he was fighting but had no idea what he was fighting for. Quite frankly, Dazai didn’t know what Atsushi was battling, either. He was already dead— there was nothing left for him and he would never achieve anything more.
Maybe this was Hell. In that case, he knew why he was there, but Atsushi? What had he done?
“Hey,” Dazai called, pulling himself and the other man out of their thoughts. “What do you call this place?”
“Huh?” A puzzled look took over Atsushi’s face— his eyebrows narrowed and he frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Are we in Hell?” He asked bluntly.
His eyes widened in horror. “I mean— I was told—” he cut himself off. “No. This place is like… I don’t know, I guess it’s a bit like Purgatory. It's just that no one here knows if Heaven actually exists. I’ve asked, and… yeah.”
Well, that certainly explained why Atsushi looked like he didn’t know what he was fighting for— not even the other supposed workers could tell him.
“Anyway, I’m here to direct you to the Agency, if you don’t mind,” Atsushi continued, reverting back to his robotic system of words. The guy was like a dog on a leash with his voice— always wanting to go on further, but certain restrictions seemed to stop him.
Seemed fun. “Atsushi,” Dazai began, “what is this Agency?”
“It’s a place where some others and I work. You’ll be starting your first day soon.”
“And your— I suppose I should say ‘our’— line of work, what is it?”
“We keep track of the souls here. Think of us as the census bureau for the dead. We know who’s arriving, who’s leaving, and how long someone’s been here. Well, time is measured differently in the afterlife, but you know what I mean,” he said. “I guess to keep it short, we keep all the information under control.”
The kid’s answer only opened up more questions. Dazai would have to make a list later, if he got the chance, but for now, his goal was to continue the conversation. The more information he gathered, the better. “So, how does one leave? And where do they go?”
The boy looked away, frustrated, like a precocious child who’d failed a test. “I don’t know. I just… I don’t know, okay? Sorry.”
I think I hit a nerve.
“No worries. Lead the way,” he replied, his temper cool in comparison to Atsushi’s sudden discontent.
It was strange, he thought, that the ghost was so anxious and angrily confused about everything, yet he buried it far beneath the surface, as if he put ice cubes into the boiling pot of water in his chest. It was almost like, if he felt he had a choice, he would let out those emotions, but he kept them hidden out of something akin to shame.
Dazai brushed these analytical thoughts out of his mind, but his consensus remained. He had an interpretation of Atsushi now, and as much as he wanted to help this kid, he knew that he was incapable.
—
When they arrived at the ‘Agency’, as it had been so dubiously dubbed, the parade had long vanished. Just like a soul, it did not seem to have an ending point, and had instead disappeared into the thick air. The music no longer triumphed over Dazai’s ears and mind.
See, he had tried his damn best to ignore the sinking feeling of strange mortality— a feeling he’d never thought he’d be faced with after death— which came with the marching band, but it seemed to be oozing into his heart, like a reminder that he would never find peace.
This feeling had some truth to it. After all, he had a job in the afterlife. That wasn’t very soothing to think about.
“Sometimes,” Atsushi explained on the walk to the Agency, “people leave. One day, they’re— very literally— happier than ever, and then the next, they’re gone.”
So, if his suspicions were correct, and Atsushi was telling the truth, then he’d get to leave when he found… happiness? This job was more impossible than he thought it would be.
But that begged the question— where did these people go? After saying that, Atsushi had mumbled something about the parade. Dazai was always smart, but even then, it didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going on.
That parade would take him to the afterlife. He would find inner peace when he joined the parade, but he had to find it on his own in order to even think about marching.
What a sick joke.
—
When Dazai and Atsushi entered the elevator to go to the Agency’s floor, a person was already in it. He wore a black coat with a frilly white shirt that contrasted it. (Side inquiry: did all the employees here wear white and black? Probably not, stupid question.)
“Nakajima,” the young man greeted, emotionless.
Atsushi winced at the sound of his name, but responded nonetheless. In the same tone, he said, “Akutagawa,” and stepped inside, standing on the opposite side of the small elevator.
Dazai couldn’t help but notice the tension that steered the energy of the room. It was such a strong force, yet he couldn’t place what drove it. (That was strange. He was usually incredibly good at reading situations, if he said so himself. It was one of his few strengths.) He noticed the two Agency members glancing at each other occasionally, and the sound that they made wasn’t distinguishable between a sigh and a disapproving huff.
His inability to understand them was frustrating, to say the least.
The elevator door opened on the third floor, and it opened up directly into a large office room with multiple desks. Only space separated the desks— no walls or anything.
Dazai was met with a few people staring at the doors whose faces he couldn’t remember and whose name tags meant nothing to him. He was usually more observant than that, but it didn’t really matter to him. He was dead— why should he care?
Right. Because I can rest in peace if I try.
Goddammit. He was backed into a corner with this dilemma. Either find peace by finding motivation, or never give two shits and forever be a soul that stares longingly at an endless parade. He wasn’t lazy, he just didn’t care. He was tired. He was as torn as the world he was in— divided between life and fulfillment.
Akutagawa, the young man (was he even young? How long had he been here?) from the elevator, walked to a desk near the far window, and Atsushi to a desk in the middle of the back of the room. Neither bothered to say a word to each other, or for that matter, to anyone else. He supposed he should follow their lead and walk to a desk with his name, but he was feeling sick just from seeing the way that the people in the office acted. There was no chance of joining the parade.
He wondered again— how long had they all been here? Years? Decades? Centuries? How much time would it take before he could leave, if ever? He saw the faces of these workers— empty, depressed, hopeless— and could only imagine himself in this state. It was just like life. He thought he’d find something akin to safety and peace in the afterlife, but it was all too painful to see that this was simply not the case.
Atsushi had called this place Purgatory, but Dazai had read the Divine Comedy. There was something to work toward in that place that Dante Alighieri had mentioned. No matter how much suffering they endured, there was always hope which would guide his characters to Heaven. Here, there simply wasn’t. It was completely dull and gray. If he began to literally see this world in black and white, that would suit it just the same as the faces of everyone he’d met. It wasn’t full of hopelessness, of course. A better word would be despair. It was as though there was certainty for the possibility of hope, but utter carnage of the heart at the lack of will to attain it.
At last, he found the desk that held his name and took a seat. There was already paperwork for him to fill out, as though he’d been there for years.
It would be much better if there was music in the background, but he didn’t have his phone or his earbuds. He doubted that he’d find any in this world, either, so he could very well just give up any hopes of getting shit done.
The first form was simple enough— filling out any information about himself. He could do that much. Name, date of birth and death, appearance, anything someone would find on an application for a job (or more accurately, for a passport, if there was anywhere to go).
He sighed— earning him a glance from another worker, who sat hunched in his chair, as though invested in his work. Who would care enough to— he must be new here.
Of course, so was he, but whatever. No one was acting like it.
Finding his mind beginning to awaken, he looked around the room at his newfound coworkers. A woman with purple hair whispered to another man who was fidgeting with a bag of skittles (how did he get those?) about… something. Dazai would’ve thought that he would be able to hear them (after all, it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop), but he couldn’t. Only the hush of their voices was audible.
Akutagawa sat at his desk with tired eyes, still working. Atsushi, the same.
So, it was just the six of them.
—
There was no sense of time in this afterlife, as far as Dazai could tell. No clocks, no calendars, no day or night. The grayness of the skyline indicated no sign of dusk or dawn, as if there was no purpose to anything changing. He might’ve been working for five days, or perhaps five weeks, but whatever the case, he couldn’t even make a guess.
They never went anywhere else, they never had any reason to. It wasn’t like they needed food or drink, and no one seemed to care that their senses had been completely dulled. It was… fine. There was no greatness or terribleness, and Dazai soon found that it was much like the nothingness that he had wanted and expected from death. It was just disappointing that it wasn’t void of the same tasks as life.
He heard a loud laugh from the other side of the room— the purple-haired woman from earlier. She clapped as she cackled. “Oh my God. I knew it!” she said before looking around a bit sheepishly, then returned to whispering. This time, however, she and the other man murmured loud enough to be heard.
“I know you’re planning on telling him,” the man said, as though stating a casual fact. He threw a piece of sour candy into his mouth and added bluntly without worry, “Don’t you dare.”
This conversation was much more interesting than the paperwork about some random dead people. He kept his eyes trained on the computer, but his ears were completely invested in the mumbled discussion.
Dazai could practically hear her smiling as she replied, “Fine, you got me. How’d you know?”
“I just know. I’ll get you some drinks from Fukuzawa if you shut up.”
She hummed. “What kind?” She said, as though her mind wasn’t already made up and her lips weren’t already sealed.
Akutagawa cleared his throat and, as though it was a signal, the two young people lowered their voices again.
That did it— Dazai was finally worked up enough to speak. He groaned in boredom. “Guys, come on, is this it?”
Akutagawa snorted. “We have more people dying, if you want more paperwork.”
Atsushi glared at him, but only a light sting was behind his eyes. For the most part, they were dull.
The other man sat furiously typing. The fast click-clack of his computer was the only noise in the room other than the slow, disinterested pencil scratch, severely contrasting each other.
“Hey, Poe,” the man in the brown hat (seriously, he looked like a newspaper boy from New York City in the early twentieth century) called.
The typer looked up from his computer for the first time that day, and Dazai could now see that his messy hair covered an entire eye. It must’ve been days— or decades— since he last ran a comb through it. His one visible eye looked right at the man who had called for him. His most shocking feature was how pale he was, and how sharp his nose stuck out— oh, he was a white guy. Wait, what was he doing in Yokohama’s afterlife?
“What are you writing about?” The other guy asked.
Poe seemed to sink into his cardigan. “It’s nothing.”
“Aw, c’mon, I’m sure it’s good.”
“I— I’ll show you later.”
Dazai did not miss Poe’s faint smile at the compliment, and that told him two things. One, that the man in the hat knew how to persuade others, or maybe just him. Two, he probably liked him.
This was… confusing, at the very least. Weren’t they all there because they had no purpose? Because they didn’t care about anything? And here was a man who cared about someone, who spent time with someone, who had a reason for ‘living’ and the drive to follow through with it! Why was he still here?
He wasn’t upset with him, or jealous; however, he was fucking frustrated with this afterlife which, in his life, he would’ve assumed did not exist. This place was too fucked up. He was absolutely right— it was a sick joke. He could practically see the powers-that-be laughing at their expense, and they were just playing along with it. How foolish.
He leaned back in his chair and put his shoes on his paperwork. Perhaps this world focused less on their feelings about others and more about their feelings about themselves. Well, that’s stupid, Dazai thought. How are we supposed to have a good opinion of ourselves when we base it on facts?
See, it wasn’t that he thought he was a horrible person. He knew it.
Suddenly, a voice on the ceiling speakers that Dazai hadn’t yet noticed announced a name: “Ranpo Edogawa, please report.”
The man in the brown hat stood up wordlessly and opened a door— what lay beyond it, Dazai didn’t know, he only caught a glimpse of the hallway it led to— promptly exiting the offices.
“Two in such a short period of time, look at that,” the purple-haired woman said, sounding surprised.
Dazai’s curiosity and aggravation had piqued. He hated not knowing enough. He hated not being able to understand his surroundings, and even though he knew he could just wait and find out later, in a split second, he made the decision to ask. “Two of what?”
“When our dear friend Ranpo gets called to Fukuzawa’s office,” the woman explained, “he almost always returns with a profile of someone who’s died.”
Dazai furrowed his eyebrows. “Great,” he muttered. “More paperwork.”
“You must have realized by now,” she grumbled.
“Huh?” Whatever she was going to say, it was likely that he had, in fact, noticed it; though, to be fair, there was a lot of information being given to him at once. He was good at remaining collected and thinking on the fly, but this was a lot.
She huffed. “There’s nothing to expect from this place. Everything is the same and nothing ever changes. Don’t forget that. You’ll be more miserable than you already are if you do.”
His mind protested— Miserable? I’m not upset with this afterlife. I earned it, didn’t I? I deserve it— but he didn’t dare voice any of it.
Ranpo returned shortly with a lollipop and a piece of paper. He nodded at the newest arrival. “Hey, Dazai Osamu— that’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”
He set the paper on Dazai’s desk. In front of him was an image of a young man about his age paper clipped to a file. “This is the newest guy, and as the newest member, you’re responsible for showing him here,” Ranpo said, then walked to his desk and sat down. “Good luck, by the way. Fukuzawa said he’s a real problem.”
“What, are we gonna have to check and make sure he doesn’t have a knife with him, like Akutagawa?” The woman said with a snicker.
Akutagawa glared at her before swiftly yanking his head back to his papers. “Watch it, Yosano.”
She laughed. “Oh no, what are you gonna do, kill me?”
He sneered.
“All jokes, dude, calm down.”
“Anyway,” Ranpo continued carelessly, one eyebrow raised in slight amusement, “you don’t have to check for a weapon. I’m sure it’s fine. He might punch you, though. He’ll probably think that you took his gun, so just be prepared.”
“Wait, what?”
He threw his hands up innocently, still holding his unwrapped lollipop. “Relax. All the information you need to know about him is on that piece of paper.”
Dazai skimmed over the paper. The information that mattered most to him was the death date— if Atsushi had known Dazai’s final day, and if he knew this man’s, then he could find out how long it had been cramped in this office. Thus, he scanned the page, searching for a number. He found multiple— he was Dazai’s age when he died, just twenty-four. His death date had to be somewhere… there it was! The twenty-second of October.
He didn’t care about his personal life. He didn’t care about his previous occupation, past partners, residencies, or his childhood. In short, he did not give a fragment of a damn about this man. All that mattered to him was that it had been three months and nine days.
Dazai stepped outside the office building and heard the faintest of noises. It took him a moment to recognize these sounds— music, he finally realized. Drums, trumpets, clarinets, and more. It was the parade, playing the same song that Dazai had heard when he’d died. It was an irritating sound. It made his ears ache.
He had expected there to be fresh air, but he soon remembered what the woman— Yosano— had told him: don’t expect anything.
He checked the name of the orange-haired man in the picture, just to ensure that he got it right when he ran into him. Nakahara Chuuya.