Chapter Text
White noise. No, white noise would be much more preferable… Hundreds of whispers floated through Asami’s mind. Most were indiscernible but still unrelenting. Occasionally some words or voices were louder or clearer than others, not that it was a good thing. She stirred the liquid in her glass before taking a large swig of it. The whispers faded a bit, or maybe it was more accurate to say that they seemed more distant despite having the same volume. She kept her eyes focused on her drink, ignoring the other bar patrons. The bartender asked her how her drink was, but she didn’t even notice his presence until she saw him in her peripheral vision. She briefly looked up at him to nod in approval.
This scene continued for some time, but Asami was unable to tell how long. Maybe it had been thirty minutes. Maybe it had been three hours. She was on her third drink now, or was it the fourth? Again, she couldn’t tell. The whispers were much louder now, probably as loud as normal conversation, but more… blurred. It was like standing in a crowded room where everyone was talking.
Even though she had lost count of her drinks, she knew it was probably one too many drinks if she wanted to escape from this bar without drawing attention to herself. As she thought through a few different escape plans, a hand waving itself in front of her drink jolted her back to reality. A hand? She glanced down to her lap and noted her own hands were still there. Then whose hand was that? Asami followed the hand to its arm and then followed the arm to its body. A young man, probably around her own age, had sat down next to her at some point. And now he was seemingly trying to get her attention. He looked at her with a slight smile, and she returned an uninterested glare.
“I think you have the wrong person,” she stammered out before he could say anything.
“Oh, no, I don’t believe we know each other, but I was wondering if—”
“I’m not interested.”
“I didn’t even finish my sentence!” he said, feigning a sulk. He thought for a second before continuing, “Ah! I’m not trying to pick you up, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just hear me out~”
Asami sighed and took the last swig of her drink. Should she have taken that as an insult? Nonetheless, it seemed like it would be more effort to shut him down than to let him ask his stupid question. “Fine, go on,” she replied reluctantly.
He put on one of the most charming, suave looks she had seen in her life, and she prepared for whatever idiotic pickup line would follow, despite his previous reassurances. “I was wondering if you’d commit suicide with me.”
The ice in his drink clinked against the glass. Enough time passed that the man thought he hadn’t even heard her. But right as he was about to repeat the question, her face softened a bit and she spoke, albeit a single word: “Sure.”
Even after accepting such a ridiculous offer, her face held a distant look, as if she was only here physically but not mentally. The coy smile he had on before was replaced with one of disappointment. “Hmmmm, I’ve been waiting so long for a woman to accept my offer, but it’s not very satisfying when you accept it like that.”
Finally her expression changed. She now looked… upset? “That’s fine. Unlike some people, I don’t mind committing suicide by myself.” She pushed her empty glass to the bartender’s side of the bar and stood up. “I need a smoke break.”
As she was pushing the barstool in, he stood up too, blocking her path. “Ahhh, I’m sorry, I went too far, didn’t I?” She had no reaction. He continued anyways. “But, I did have one more question for you.” A chilling smirk crept across his face as he asked, “How were you planning on paying for those drinks?”
Asami froze. Just when she thought he had given her the perfect excuse to escape, he had cornered her instead. How did he know? She had been so careful the past few weeks to go to bars in different areas of the city, wearing different styles of clothes, and using different escape plans each time. Yet this stranger knew exactly what she was trying to do. Without realizing it, this terror began making its way onto her expression.
“You said you’re going out for a smoke, but you don’t have a purse or bag with you. Or any pockets on your clothes for that matter. So unless both your cigarettes and your wallet are tucked away safely in your bra, I highly doubt that you’re planning to return once you walk out those doors.” He explained all of this so matter-of-factly, as if he were some omniscient presence and not a random stranger who sat down next to her just a few minutes ago. Her silence was all the proof he needed. “And, seeing as you’re not producing a wallet out of your bra right now, I take it that everything I’ve just said is true.”
“No… That’s…” She closed her eyes out of frustration and stepped backwards out of fear. The voices seemed louder too, grasping at her attention. “I…”
She took another step backwards, overwhelmed by both the multitude of voices as well as the stinging accusation. These distractions held her mind’s full attention, keeping her oblivious to the next barstool behind her until it was too late. As she felt gravity taking control of the situation, her eyes bolted open. She saw the man in front of her replace his sadistic expression with one of surprise. And she saw him reaching out towards her. More panic set in.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, a deep fear obvious in its undertones. It was the first thing she had said all night that had any amount of emotion behind it. And the emotion in that one sentence more than made up for it.
But his hand had already grabbed her wrist. It was the only thing preventing her body from crashing against the floor of the bar.
White noise. Except this time, it really was white noise. A deafening, mind-numbing white noise that was louder than anything she had heard before. She quickly yanked her arm from the man’s grasp and clutched both her hands to her ears in a desperate attempt to block out the sound.
All of the other bar patrons were staring, their attention pulled to the scene by her previous scream. It was a bewildering scene – a young woman sitting on the floor, eyes closed and hands covering her ears, gritting her teeth. The man standing in front of her looked around nervously. To an outsider, it probably looked like he had done something horrendous to her. He raised his hands in front of himself defensively and gave the crowd a weak smile in an attempt to assert his innocence.
Her brain caught up with her own actions finally, its capabilities severely hampered by the piercing sound that continued. Still covering her ears, she weakly opened her eyes and stumbled back onto her feet. She darted to the bathroom without meeting any of the other customers’ stares. After a few minutes they returned to their own drinks and conversations.
“Oi, Dazai, what did you do to that poor girl?” the bartender asked the young man.
“I didn’t do anything! I swear!” He held his glass up for a refill, and the bartender reached under the bar for his usual drink.
“Yeah right, not with that kind of scream. Did you grope her or something?”
“I did not! Why won’t you believe me~” he whined, faking a pained expression.
The bartender refilled Dazai’s drink and re-corked the bottle. “Look, I don’t really care what you do to her. Just don’t scare off any customers.”
Before Dazai could defend himself further, the bartender had already walked away. He sipped his drink, looking towards the bathroom.
Inside, Asami had locked herself in a stall, crumpled onto the ground once more. She was used to the constant whispers invading her ears, but she had never experienced anything like this. She heard the sound of a toilet in another stall flushing. Why did it sound like that? So… clear. Like putting glasses on for the first time and finally seeing all the details you had missed before. She removed her hands from her ears and noticed it had no effect on the white noise. The same person who had flushed the toilet was now washing their hands. Again, it sounded clearer than ever before. She had never noticed that even a faucet had such a… soft sound. Something in her mind finally clicked. The white noise… was it actually silence?
As the other person left the restroom, Asami carefully adjusted herself to a more normal sitting position. She closed her eyes. For the first time in her life, the whispers were gone. No matter how much alcohol she drank, and no matter how many pills she swallowed, the sound had never just… gone away. It was always there, somewhere in the background. Sometimes it would seem more distant or less discernible, but it was always there, for as long as she could remember. Something fell down her cheek. Shortly afterwards, she felt something wet streaming down her neck. She was crying. Finally, the whispers were gone.
She picked herself up off of the floor and ran out of the bathroom. The other patrons in the bar turned to look at her, but she continued running.
“Ah, wait!” the man she had talked with earlier called out.
Whether she didn’t notice him or was too ecstatic to care was unclear as she ran out of the bar. Dazai sighed. He called the bartender over, fishing some bills out of his wallet. “How much was on her tab?”