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In Yokohama, it was common for it to rain as the seasons shifted closer to summer. Summer rain was always scenic in a way, with an air that makes you grateful or regretful to live in the moment. June is so called to be the wettest month of every year in Yokohama, but as it stands this year, as May gave way to mid-June, and an awfully queer thing is happening to the port city's weather.
For the first time in decades, there was no rain despite it being June.
It didn't rain yesterday.
It hadn't rained for one straight week.
And it certainly isn't raining today.
The sun hangs high in the midday sky, shining obnoxiously upon the bustling port city. Chuuya scowls upwards, feeling like he's cooking in his black suit and almost wishes it'd just goddamn rain already. But the sun glares on, almost as if in celebration for what he'd accomplished a week ago.
He snorts at the thought as he walks towards a tree, determined to stand under the shade. It's not like he could leave anyway, not before the ceremony ended.
Dazai wouldn't let him.
Chuuya rolls his eyes. And we're all here to kiss that bastard's ass, aren't we?
You see, a week ago, Chuuya had single-handedly taken down the entire Port Mafia, as you do.
Two days ago, his body had finally recovered from the immense strain of Corruption.
And today, he's here to accompany a few members of the Armed Detective Agency as they gather to mourn their only casualty during the incident, the supposed loss of one Dazai Osamu.
Chuuya watches from a safe distance as the members herd around the gravestone they'd put up for the ex-mafia. The adults aren't crying, all respectfully placing flowers and looking at the rock as if staring long enough could bring his annoying ass back somehow, but the younger ones are all at varying stages of tear-streaked embarrassment. There's some straw-hatted blonde and a school girl who're outright bawling, then some dumbass who can't even wish to pull off Chuuya's hair colour shaking trying to hold in his sobs, and finally, surprise of all surprises, Nakajima Atsushi is doing the quiet crier routine.
Chuuya wonders what the hell these people are sad for but he supposes it's fair, since Dazai had apparently died on duty, like a hero.
Not that Chuuya would know.
It's not as if Dazai had traded his life to save the last of Chuuya's while he was on a destructive rampage.
It's not.
(If you asked him, it's what he gets for coming in from the front while Corruption was active anyway. It's rule number 1, it was your own rule, idiot.)
He mulls over more things from his spot near the southern exit of the graveyard. The ADA seemed like really attached folks to Chuuya, who would've waited the forty-nine days instead of seven, but maybe the fact that there was no body to cremate played a part into the quick funeral.
Yup, faded to dust like everything else Corruption touches; as Dazai would say, and yet he still gets a funeral. Lucky bastard.
An actual funeral. No one else at the mafia was that lucky either.
His thoughts stray and Chuuya tries to think of whoever is still fucking alive, post forced disbandment.
Not Q, since he's the bastard who provoked Chuuya in the first place. (Fucking MIND CONTROLLER, fucking Mori Ogai's proteges, fuck, Koyou warned him ages ago--)
Not Hirotsu, nor Tachihara. Their squads were the first to defend, therefore the first to fall.
Not Mori, nor Elise. Not- God, maybe he should just recount the people who weren't at base. Who wasn't at base?
Akutagawa, who was a town over culling some small fry, so subsequently, Higuchi, who then dragged Gin along by the hems of her baggy coat.
Koyou-nee, who was at her private quarters just outside of base perimeters.
And... that's it. All that's left of the great Port Mafia, Chuuya excluded. He can practically hear the remaining gangs stumbling over themselves in trying to restore the balance now that there's such a big gap. (Metaphorically and literally: all that's left of the base is a giant empty crater.) What a joke.
He wonders if he should feel more guilty for accidentally murdering what's essentially 99% of a large criminal organization. Actually, Chuuya's pretty sure whatever part of himself that's responsible for guilt has shut off itself temporarily. If it were Mori's orders, he wouldn't feel a damn thing. But as things stand, well...
It's just a real huge shame, let's leave it at that.
Chuuya doesn't know what'll happen the moment he stops to dwell, to brood. Will he lose it again? Cry?
Or is chilling indifference all he can muster in review of all this fresh blood on his hands? Christ, what the fuck is his kill count now? Not that it was any minor number beforehand, but. Still.
They all knew he was capable of it anyway. What the fuck was Mori thinking, letting Q out with Chuuya around and Dazai not?
A black mercedes pulls up next to him just as the ADA members begin to file away. They go back the way they came, headed to the entrance and all so caught up in their grief that they don't even stray close to where Chuuya stands. All leave except Atsushi and Kyouka, but the latter yields too after a few (what Chuuya assumes to be) reassuring words. Atsushi stands alone, looking desolate and lost. Chuuya grumbles under his breath about proteges, and he hears the sound of the driver car window rolling down. He walks over and leans on the shotgun door, speaking loud enough for the driver to hear him.
“You told me to come here, but nothing fucking happened.” Chuuya snaps to the man in the car. They all look okay. They will be. “All there was is a bunch of crying kids. Especially Nakajima.”
The driver chuckles, a low and sure thing. “Atsushi will be fine. Akutagawa's there for him, after all.”
Chuuya's about to retort with a scathing remark about how Akutagawa is not 'there for him' in the right sense, because last time he checked Akutagawa is out for Nakajima's blood, but something catches his eye. Speak of the devil, Chuuya can see Akutagawa walking up to Nakajima, recognizable even in the distance. The man-tiger greets him, in as much as an angry heated argument can be considered a greeting, and for a moment it really looks like both of Dazai Osamu's ex-proteges would break out a fight at his very gravestep. Chuuya watches with morbid curiosity, just to see what might happen.
But to his surprise, Akutagawa shows no sign of the hostility he's usually so fond of, and Nakajima relaxes, albeit confusedly. They talk of something Chuuya doesn't hear, and soon walk away from the graveyard, shoulder to shoulder, completely not trying to kill each other and both looking a little brighter for it. The person in the car chuckles at the sight, and Chuuya tries not to be obvious with how shocked he is.
“Guess there's a first for everything,” Chuuya mumbles.
A gentle breeze blows by, and he sighs contentedly, savoring the sensation of it cooling his skin in the noon sun. He opens his eyes and is greeted by gray clouds in the sky for the first time in the entire week. The weather cools marginally, but something in his core radiates warmth anyway. He feels like a new person, now that he's standing in Yokohama with no standing attachment to the mafia. If he had to describe it, it pleasantly feels like being rid of a burden that had been keeping him on his knees, and he allows himself a moment to bask in it.
His driver isn't so kind though.
A loud honk tears him from his reverie, and Chuuya nearly falls off the car and onto the ground in shock. The driver snorts from his seat, and while normally he would've confronted a situation like such very violently, Chuuya can't find it in himself to do it at this moment. Just for today, he huffs, and opens the car door, smoothly sliding into the shotgun seat of the jet black Mercedes.
“Thanks for nothing, bastard,” Chuuya says, shedding his black jacket and resolutely not looking beside him. "You try that again, I'll fucking kill you."
"Oh but haven't you heard, Chuuya?" The man seated behind the steering wheel is none other than Dazai Osamu himself; previously a terrible man, a wrong man, a righted man, and most recently of all, a dead man, for all that it's worth. Right now he's grinning, amused, and very much alive though. More's the pity, Chuuya thinks. "I'm already dead! There, they even made me a headstone! I think that's the sweetest thing they've ever done for me!!"
His voice sounds cheerful, but it's severely disconnected from the emotion on his face. Dazai looks out in the same direction Chuuya's facing, his expression unreadable. The redhead lets him a moment to brood, then when he opens his mouth to speak, Dazai cuts him off. Typical. "I didn't think you of all people would've committed a double suicide with me, Chuuya."
"That's not what I did."
"Chuuya," Dazai gasps, mock offended. "That is exactly what you did! You destroyed an entire criminal organization! With Corruption, you took out squad after squad, room after room! Your body couldn't handle the strain of it all and your heart sent me, your partner, a cry for help- ("No it didn't, Mori called you, asshole-") -and I came rushing for you... Oh but I was too late, because by the time I gave you the kiss of life-"
"Shut up, alright, enough!" Chuuya reaches over to shove Dazai's laughing face into the car window. "Coming in from the front just to kiss me with No Longer Human is the stupidest, most suicidal thing you've ever done and I haven't forgiven you for it, dipshit! You're gonna make it up to me and that's final!!"
Dazai sighs the enamored sigh of someone who'd been laughing way too much in the past minute, day, week. He's never really stopped since the incident, actually. "Then how should I make it up to you, pray tell? Shall I kiss you again? Buy you a ring and elope?"
Chuuya stares ahead, tries not to comment that that is also what they're already doing, and thinks about to the disappearing act they pulled under the guise that Corruption left no blood or bone, for either of them. Technically they're both dead men at this point. Dazai says that's the fun part. Chuuya can't help but agree, what with how they still have an average of at least 40 years left to live, now completely free of the mafia too. He was loyal to it, sure, but it was also an extreme shithole.
Ah, the port mafia, dead and gone. Chuuya thinks he might be high off it. He knows Dazai definitely is.
They're both high off death, senses having taken a vacation, and someday the high will end and their sense will return. Then they'll have to think of the ADA. Akutagawa. Koyou. Hell, even Oda's legacy, despite what Dazai likes to think Chuuya doesn't know. But here they are, Dazai and Chuuya, waltzing through the silver linings on clouds; not just resolutely refusing to face reality by driving off in a black car but also laughing at reality's face in the backview mirror. By the nature of itself, reality will eventually catch up. They both know this.
“I've always wanted to go to Paris,” he whispers the first thing he can come up with.
But hey, laughing in the rearview mirror, yeah?
"So we're going there." Chuuya finally spares Dazai a look to gauge his reaction.
He's folded his arms on the steering wheel and was resting his chin on it with the most doped-out, love-struck look on his face. Nothing like the surprise or bafflement Chuuya was expecting, but since when did Dazai ever do what Chuuya expected anyway?
“How grandiose, Chuuya. La mort n'a peut-être pas plus de secrets à nous révéler que la vie?”
Chuuya cackles, and it sounds like birds taking flight, fire crackling wood, it sounds like all the things they've always wanted to throw away together and its a sound of freedom, for the both of them. “Je veux boire comme un trou.”
At this, Dazai laughs. It doesn't sound completely free of the bitterness Dazai's harbored in his heart for the past decade, but Chuuya laughs along with him. He's feeling confident; confident in himself, confident that they can deal with both their demons, one thing at a time.
They're both dead men, after all. They have all the time in the world.