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It has been fourteen months, one week, five days and eighteen hours since Osamu Dazai's official defection from the Port Mafia. He knows this, because he has counted them. Every second, every minute, every hour, sludging past monotonous days bearing all the thickness of molasses, without any of their sweetness. If his mathematic is correct—which it always is—then Dazai has approximately five months, two weeks, two days and six hours before his self-imposed isolation can finally end. After this, he will be able to live freely: no more looking over his shoulder for mafia dogs, Mori and his contracted men with blood-hungry guns. No more hours spent staring at the water-logged, leaking ceiling of a one room Kotobukicho apartment. No more relative house arrest, either—he will be able to leave his home and not take his gun strapped underneath his coat, possess the ability to travel further than two miles from his front doorstep without needing a disguise.
When this is over, he will join the Armed Detective Agency, as per Taneda's offer, in honour of Oda and his dying request. He will attempt to adhere to common standards of morality for a while—or at least, he will not slip back into the familiarity of transgressing moral boundaries—and if that does not go well, then he knows an easy solution, a way out of his newfound situation. The same answer he has always found to be universally applicable. Dazai is not calling off his own death—the very thought is unthinkable, actually—he is merely postponing it, instead. Until then, he is in the waiting room.
The waiting room, for Dazai, takes many a form; most of the time his own decrepit abode. Sometimes, it is other people's, the dingy apartments of one-night stands, hotel rooms in seedy districts far from his own central Yokohama slice of sin. There have been police cells, on some particularly awful nights, and hospital wards, on others. All of these places, however different, however dangerous, share one common factor, in that all they do for Dazai is pass the time. The only emotion they conjure up in him is further apathy. He does not care where he is—passed out in a gutter wearing his own vomit like a blouse, in the arms of a nameless stranger, behind the metal bars of a cell or netted hospital curtains—as long as he is somewhere, and one day closer to the future.
Whether that future is a desk at the Agency or his very own plot in Yokohama's cheapest cemetery, he has not yet decided. Hence, the waiting rooms.
Tonight, the waiting room of choice is a bar. Not a particularly special bar, or even a particularly pleasant one—it does not bear the low, comforting aureate glow of the low-hanging oil lamps in Bar Lupin, nor did the weary-eyed bartender smile and nod at Dazai when he entered like they might have done in his old preferred haunts. Instead it is, to put it kindly, something of a dive. Nicotine stains the overhead fluorescent lights a sickly ochre, and when he goes to rest his hands on the bar-top, his fingers come away sticky and damp. The ratty old carpet is torn at the edges. Peeling, yellowed wallpaper lines the walls. Ambling, zombielike patrons are the only inhabitants of this place tonight, the dregs of society huddled in corners nursing filthy glasses of beer, or playing half-hearted games with battered decks of cards, clustered around the splintered central tables.
Dazai orders his own usual drink of choice—whisky, neat—and watches the haggard bartender as she serves it to him in a grimy, cracked glass.
There's dirt underneath her fingernails. It is black, and thick, and plentiful.
Dazai eyes it, and thinks about how far he has fallen.
He's two drinks in and still stone-cold sober when the shorter man approaches him.
"Excuse me," the stranger begins, an accent to his voice that Dazai cannot place. Russian, maybe. "But would you mind terribly if I were to sit here, just for a while?"
Dazai looks up from his third glass of cheap whisky at the pale, slender hand placed against the bar stool on his right.
"Sure," he shrugs, not paying this interloper a second thought. "Sit where you'd like."
"Thank you."
A weight settles into the chair next to Dazai. The silence that has veiled him all night returns.
Dazai settles back into his alcoholic reverie. He swills the amber liquid around in its glass, watching it shimmer underneath the dim, tow-coloured light, and drains the rest of his glass in two quick gulps.
It burns his throat—for all the experience he has with drinking, even Dazai cannot stomach the taste of cheap alcohol—and he pushes the glass away, face scrunched up in disgust.
"A lightweight, I take it?"
The smooth voice cuts in again, velvet-soft. Uncharacteristically polite for what Dazai would expect from a patron of an establishment such as this. He looks up, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm not one for cheap whisky."
"Neither."
The sound of another glass being pushed away follows swiftly.
It is dark in the bar—smoky, humid. Summer heat oppresses the underground bar from the dying rays of the July sunbeams above, the bodies packed tightly inside only exacerbating the claustrophobic odour of cigarette smoke and stale sweat. Dingy fluorescence sweeps across the man's face as Dazai stares into his eyes: he cannot make out the full extent of this stranger's visage, only dark irises and high, knife-sharp cheekbones, but even amid the smog, he can visualise a smile. It isn't a sweet one, no trace of amicability to match the polite, lilting cadence of the voice attached to it. Instead, it is curious; hungry, even. Dazai is no stranger to being looked at with desire, with want, but he can tell by the chill of the man's shadowed gaze and the knowing curve of his thin mouth that this is something else altogether.
Something a lot worse.
"And yet you're here anyway," Dazai points out. "In a bar." He stretches his arms out on the table and rests his head on them in a languid motion. The alcohol has begun to take effect, loosening his inhibitions. The urge to provoke this man further begins to take root. Dazai would like to pique his curiosity a little more, to needle him, taunt him, and find out exactly what lurks behind that too-familiar smile.
"Why are you here," he continues, repeating the statement, "If you find the refreshments on offer to be so repulsive?"
Dazai gestures around at their surroundings, the sunken faces of stumbling drunks and the cracked plaster spiderwebbing the walls where the paper has peeled away. It's not the kind of place people come to for the scenery: drowning one's sorrows on a budget is about the only reason anyone would ever have to visit this desolate, underground palace of rot.
"Research," The man replies. "To observe."
Dazai snorts. "What are you, an anthropologist?"
"Of sorts. Let's say, for now, I have a… vested interest, when it comes to certain patrons."
His gaze does not leave Dazai.
Likewise, Dazai's gaze does not leave him.
Together, they hold the stare for a moment. Another silence passes. There's something unmistakably electric about the air surrounding them: a staticky, thrumming buzz that feels charged and energetic enough to shock any fool stupid enough to pass in between them right now. The space itself is alive, warm with heat and meaning, more animate in its star-hot burn than any of the pitiful walking dead still shuffling from the bar to the tables and back again.
Dazai has not been part of the land of the living in months, a veritable ghost haunting filthy bars and damp apartments. He has identified himself as both casket and corpse all at once, a dead thing housing another dead thing housing even more rot and decay, deep down inside. A categorical nesting doll of empty grief. When he looks at this man, this pale, slender being with cavernous cheekbones and the remnants of intrigue on his lips, he does not see anything alive there either, make no mistake. The stranger, too, looks half-dead—deceased on his feet—and the cold numbness of his eyes only adds to his cadaverous demeanour. Dazai knows nothing good lurks behind them. The same way he knows that there is no universe in which the man in front of him will not track him down again when he tries to leave, knows that there is no chance the man has not been searching for him a long, long time already.
The same way Dazai knows that when the man expresses his interest in the bar's patrons, he really just means Dazai.
It is clear that to continue to indulge him any further than this brief conversation will do Dazai no good. He has less than six months of isolation to go—perhaps even less than six months of living, if the Agency deal falls through. He cannot afford to jeopardise any of his remaining time by satiating the sinister curiosity of one single stranger. Even for Dazai, that would be suicidal.
But even so, there is something painfully real about the man that stands in front of him now. He is more alive in his pallid, spectral presence than any ten red-cheeked drunkards singing slurred songs of misplaced joy around the stereo. The expression he wears, full of unearned intimacy, full of a tired, accursed hunger that indicates Dazai is its only chance at satiation, is almost exciting. Typically, Dazai does not find himself roused easily. Particularly not by other people, and especially not since the death of Oda, the loss of Dazai's own feigned sense of camaraderie with his fellow humans that went with him. He does not find himself roused easily, and yet, the refreshing familiarity of a situation that may place him in untold danger is comforting. Enticing, even. In the worst possible way, yes, not anodyne by any means, but then, wasn't that the whole point?
The actions Dazai takes are always meant to hurt. What would be the fun in them if they didn't?
Dazai has always liked danger. He has always liked putting himself in harm's way. He has always liked the fire, and the burn, and the lighter and gasoline that spark the flame that sears the skin. The singing of hair, the ash on the ground, the blackened scorch marks staining every surface in the wake of the blaze. Burn scars, pink and raw, hollowed out buildings and foundations eaten through with tongues and teeth of red-orange-yellow fire. Dazai likes to be the burn, and he likes to be the burnt, and he likes, even, just to watch, too, just to see what will happen. To tip a little alcohol onto a closed flame and watch the fire leap that small bit higher.
When Dazai looks at this man, he does not see death. Nor, however, does he see life. The reflections in his eyes speak of something else altogether. Something dark and dangerous, something that portends no good omens, no promises of salvation and light, but perhaps a kind of freedom, all the same. If Dazai assumes the role of the matches and the fuel—provoking the curiosity of this man in the first place—then the stranger himself is the blazing fire. Dazai would like to touch it, to feel it lick his fingertips and stain them soot-black, to feel the burn and be reminded that he is alive, that there is something more than darkened, water-logged waiting rooms and the stink of apathy that cloaks him like a shroud.
Dazai would like to know more about him. Dazai is tired of being bored. He is tired, mostly, of waiting.
He smiles, and puts a bandaged hand out in front of him.
"Dazai. Osamu Dazai."
The other man only smiles wider. With his long black hair and slender limbs, he looks like some kind of arachnid, mandibles twitching with joy at the fly now thoroughly ensnared in his web.
"Fyodor Dostoevsky," he replies lightly. He takes Dazai's hand and grips it firmly. "Pleased to make your acquaintance."
"Likewise." Dazai relinquishes his own grip, requiring some force to yank his hand free.
They stare at each other once again. The electric current passing between them strengthens into a pulse.
"Fyodor," Dazai begins all of a sudden, now wearing an expression as enigmatic as Dostoevsky's own. "May I buy you a drink?"
It is some hours later when the two men finally stumble up the steps of the bar and out into the twilight streets of Yokohama. Fyodor was wearing a hat when he had entered—fluffy and white, with flaps hanging down over his ears like a cartoon rabbit. It is now planted firmly upon Dazai's head instead. A cigarette is perched delicately in Fyodor's mouth—thin, pale lips curved around the base of the stick, blowing smoke out into the soupy evening air. Periodically, this too becomes Dazai's possession, scarred fingers rising up to snatch the cigarette and insert it into his own mouth. Fyodor does not seem to mind, and if he does, then he refrains from mentioning it.
By now, they have known each other for three hours, one hundred and eighty minutes, ten thousand and eight hundred seconds. This is not a sufficient period of time in which to get to know someone, of course—they have conversed for most of their time spent together, that much is true, back and forth quite amicably, and yet, Dazai does not feel like he knows much about Fyodor at all. He doesn't know his age—older than himself, but that's just an assumption—nor does he know his middle name, or his favourite colour, or the town he grew up in, or any small details befitting of most usual acquaintances. What he does know is that Fyodor believes in God, very thoroughly, in fact, and he also speaks with a low, quiet reverence any time Dazai's name passes the floodgate of his lips, like Dazai too is a religion in himself, and that Fyodor cannot hold his whisky, not in the slightest, not if he tried—Dazai practically has to steer him up the bar's rickety staircase.
He does not know a lot, as previously established, and yet he has already decided that he does not like Fyodor one bit. He does not, in fact find him interesting after all—for all Fyodor's talk of God, and man, and sin and heaven and the inherent stupidity of the common human being, all these grand, philosophical declarations, Fyodor Dostoevsky is a shockingly boring man when all the theism is stripped away. He is bland, banal. An insipid little man with a one-track-mind, prone to waxing poetic on his own limited point of view rather than opening his eyes to the real world that surrounds him. It makes Dazai yearn for Chuuya, almost—his old partner's fire, the cut of his wit, the easy, biting causticity of the rapport the two had built up over the years. And that's a sentiment he could never have pictured himself expressing.
Fyodor possesses none of this. He possesses none of Chuuya's qualities. Barely any of his own. He possesses nothing to Dazai, period. Ironically, the only thing that interests Dazai is Fyodor's own interest in him.
He tells Fyodor this, as they turn down a darkened alley, reaching out to pluck the burnt-out cigarette from Dostoevsky's weakened grip.
"So stepping out with me is nothing more than an exercise in narcissism on your part, then, I take it?"
"Narcissism is not a diagnosis I can ascribe to myself," Dazai replies blithely. "The psychiatrists I've spoken to say I'm borderline. Or schizoid. Mori thought I had ASPD. Chuuya always said it was—"
"I'm aware of the labels people have attempted to pin to you, Dazai." Fyodor cuts Dazai's carefree speech off with a calm, measured tone. "None, however, are quite how I would describe you, if I were to give my own input. Not that my comment was meant as a formal diagnosis, anyhow. In fact, if you were to ask me, I'd say you were—"
"Yes, well, nobody did ask you, did they? And stop doing that."
"Doing what?" The faux innocence in his voice is saccharine, mocking. It makes Dazai want to scream.
"Speaking about me as if you know me," Dazai responds bluntly. "As if you're my friend. I don't know what sort of connection you've built between us in your head, but we've never met before, not once in our lives. I don't know you. And you don't know me."
"Connection is not as much of a two-way street as you may believe," comes Fyodor's cryptic response. "I never claimed that we shared a bond, anyway. Only that I knew you."
"Yet you still neglect to tell me how."
"I didn't realise you'd find it so shocking that a stranger might be familiar with your name. Given your… reputation, I would have assumed this to be a common occurrence."
"My name and former occupation are common knowledge," Dazai concedes, flicking the cigarette butt into the gutter lazily. "The rest, however, is not so easily gleaned."
He looks down at Fyodor.
"Not unless you've been watching."
An amused laugh spills from Fyodor's lips, his head tipped back underneath the light of the waxing moon. Illuminated by the pale glow, he looks more inhuman than ever, skin white as the vulnerable underside of a fish, features pointed like needle hooks. As sharp and shiny as shark teeth, and twice as dangerous.
"Watching you myself is beyond my current capabilities, I'm afraid," he admits at last. "Information, however, is much easier to come by. I've found that Yokohama is much like other cities—full of the greedy, the hungry. Those who will do, say, and give anything for the right price."
Dazai raises an eyebrow. "And I'm worth that price, you're saying?"
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. I have yet to decide."
A shrug, Dazai's blunt indifference.
"Your decision is of no consequence to me."
"Ah." Fyodor turns to him. "Because you find me uninteresting, correct?"
"Nice guesswork, Sherlock. They'll be asking you to join the ADA before you know it."
Dazai's sarcasm falls on deaf ears, like it has been doing all night. It appears that jokes only seem to become funny to Fyodor when he is the one to tell them.
"It doesn't matter if you find me interesting right now or not, Dazai," Fyodor declares—almost admonishing him, as if the very notion of permanent disinterest was ridiculous. "You will. Eventually."
"Confident, aren't we?"
"I prefer to be described as self-assured."
"If that makes you feel any better about it."
"It does."
They walk in silence for a block or two, winding through slate-grey streets speckled with garbage, passing by gutters spilling over with old rainwater. Dazai is not sure where the two of them are going, not sure at what point they're even planning to split off and head their separate ways, but at some point during their conversation, Fyodor elected to begin walking slightly behind Dazai—giving the impression that he would prefer it if the other man led the way. To where, as previously stated, Dazai is not sure, and he has a feeling that to ask Fyodor directly would offer no reprieve from this confusion.
He briefly debates taking them both to another bar. While the place they met in tonight was sleazy, dishevelled, Dazai is familiar enough with his new neighbourhood of residence by now to know that there are better establishments him and Fyodor could pass the time in. Not more respectable, per se—most bars and pubs around here are on the bad side of meretricious, gaudy neon lights and flashy exterior design their best shot at concealing the licentious profligacy and debauchery hidden away within. But perhaps it is possible to find places more private, and definitely cleaner, with more drinks on the menu than diluted whisky and convenience store beer.
Besides, as Dazai has always said, in vino, veritas. Fyodor may be more likely to open up to him under the influence. They're already both less than sober, that much is true, but the enigmatical hue to each and every one of Fyodor's words has yet to waver beyond brief, murky hints at a deeper purpose to his accosting of Dazai at a Kotobukicho dive bar on a random Thursday evening. If Dazai can loosen him up, remove his inhibitions, perhaps more truth may be eked out of him, like dragging a corpse from the depths of a lake-bed. He thinks about it, weighing his options, and eventually decides against any more alcohol for either of them. It's not like Dazai has any qualms about getting someone drunk in order to question them more successfully, far from it—some of his best deals in the Mafia were conducted amid empty bottles of wine and used, breath-smudged shot glasses. Rather, it is that he doubts Fyodor would not see through his plan before it were even to begin.
Fyodor is intelligent, smart. When he looks at Dazai, it is the psychological equivalent of a butter knife slicing through fresh margarine. An oar, sifting through water. A sharp set of jaws biting clean through soft animal underbelly. Dazai sees him, and he knows without even really having to know Fyodor well that the other man sees him right back. Across the abyss that lurks between every man, the endless chasm of human disconnect, and deep into the very recesses of his stretched-thin soul. They are, Dazai thinks, intellectually matched. Which does, as Fyodor thinks, give the dark-haired man a unique piquancy. It has been a long time—no, this is the first time, actually, where Dazai has not found himself bored and disappointed by the limitations of someone else's brain.
When they spoke at the bar, it was of many things. Religion, morality, philosophy, ethics, man and God and sin and virtue and all the spaces in between. Dazai had not agreed with Fyodor on all of it, only the points he had made about human greed and the near-ubiquitous presence of evil, and yet, he had been unable to close his ears to the rest of what Fyodor declared, even with the utilisation of his own best efforts. He did not want to admit to it—had lied to Fyodor's face just now when questioned—but he did, in fact, find the other man strangely captivating. Both in their similarities—their shared intellect, their misanthropy, their dry, acerbic wit—and in their differences, the faith Fyodor possesses, the empathy that he does not. It took Dazai meeting Fyodor to realise this, but he is not quite as numb as he had initially believed. Next to Fyodor, he looks downright charitable. Love may not come easy to him, compassion even less so, but he carries Oda's words with him like a charm, tucked next to his promise in the small alcove of his heart that not even two years of grief and isolation can completely freeze over.
When he looks at Fyodor, he sees none of this.
When he looks at Fyodor, he sees what he could have been, what he could still become.
When Dazai looks at Fyodor, he sees something terrifying.
He tears his gaze away at last, and they round another corner.
It takes Dazai a moment to realise where he has brought the two of them. They stand in front of the dilapidated, crumbling apartment building he has called home for the last fourteen months, silhouettes small against the gaping concrete maw of its entryway. Dazai has brought Fyodor back to his own place. For what reason his subconscious mind chose this destination, he cannot begin to fathom. But as it stands, they are here, shivering lightly as the gelid winds of Yokohama summer nights begin to nip at their skin.
Dazai understands, even with the confusion and non-sobriety fogging his brain, that bringing Fyodor here has implications. He is unsure whether Fyodor himself recognises these implications—he doubts it, what with the other man's limited social skills. He can't imagine that Fyodor is invited back to people's apartments very often. Regardless, whether or not Fyodor has any inclination as to what two drunk individuals imbued with mutual fascination often do with each other at the end of the night has little importance in this particular instance, for that is not what Dazai wishes to do with him, not for now.
At least, he doesn't think so. It's not that he doesn't find Fyodor attractive—well, he doesn't, but that's never stopped him before—it's that he has a feeling that whatever sparks are flying between them will not be solved with something as simple as drunk, messy sex. Physical attraction is not what binds them. Dazai wishes it was—it would be a hell of a lot easier to get rid of Fyodor if that were the case. But it isn't, and he can't, not while so many questions still require answers.
No matter. He will take him inside anyway.
Fyodor leans against the wall, watching Dazai as the other man fumbles with his key fob.
"Are you going to invite me in for a nightcap, Dazai? That's very generous of you, I must say."
With a roll of his eyes, Dazai finally scans the fob, watching the door spring open.
"I don't foresee any reality in which you wouldn't just invite yourself in regardless, to be perfectly honest with you."
"Ah. You really are starting to catch on."
Fyodor follows Dazai as they climb the stairs to the third floor, hovering just outside of his peripheral vision, like a shadow, a wraith. For all the non-corporeal comparisons that spring to Dazai's mind, he can feel Fyodor's physical presence to an almost overwhelming degree, the other man having no concept of personal space whatsoever. He practically hangs over Dazai's shoulder, the cold slab of his body sending chills through the warm flesh of Dazai's own back and torso, sticking to him like glue and freezing him like ice-water as they approach the door to his apartment.
"Mind backing up a little for a moment?" Dazai asks, twisting the key in the lock. "You're blocking out the light."
"Of course. My apologies." Fyodor replies smoothly. But he doesn't move an inch.
Letting out a long sigh, Dazai pushes open the door to his apartment, dragging his body inside without looking back. It almost shuts itself in Fyodor's face—a small exhale of surprise emits from the other man, still managing to be louder than anything else in the tranquil stillness of the twilit apartment complex. Fortunately for him—and unfortunately for Dazai—Fyodor wedges his foot into the space between the door and the wall, Dazai's lack of effort to hold the entryway open for him bearing no effect on his ability to cement himself inside.
Even by Dazai's standards, his current residence is shameful. Before this purgatory, when he was still a demon, still bound to the mafia through obligation and his own rotten luck, his colleagues had routinely mocked him for the tiny shipping container he had generously called a home. Chuuya point-blank refused to enter it unless absolutely necessary—they had always met at his place, instead—and Dazai could never have blamed him, for inside had been truly pitiful: plastic, concrete, empty, damp. A couple of times, even Mori had expressed 'concern', offering to set Dazai up with his own suite in headquarters instead, or badgering him to move into a shiny penthouse in the city like Chuuya's. You've got the money for it, he would chastise Dazai, every time the topic of the young man's living situation was called to attention. Why you insist on staying in a place like that, I'll never understand.
Dazai had thought at the time that his electing to spend his free time rotting away within an abandoned plastic box was an act of rebellion, a final 'fuck you' to Mori and the Mafia. They could turn him into a weapon and strip him of his identity, set him up to kill hundreds with bullets and desires that did not belong to him, dress him in clothes that never fit and make the streets of Yokohama whisper his name like a curse, but they could not take away the things that made him himself, the innate self-destruction, the three years before the mafia he had spent sleeping below creaking awnings, curled tight underneath shop doorways. He would be one of them, for as long as it was required, but he would never be theirs.
Now, looking around his new apartment, without the excuse of misplaced rage and bitter voracity for individual freedoms to soothe his emancipated soul, Dazai is beginning to come to the conclusion that perhaps it is just him who craves suffering.
He is not only the corpse and the casket, but the gravedigger, too.
After all, he could have picked anywhere to hide out for two years, provided it were safe and inconspicuous, but it was him who chose this peeling, water-logged broom closet of an apartment. He was the one who wrote his own name on the lease and signed the contract even after seeing the thin-tailed rats pursue roaches across the floorboards, even after catching a glimpse of the black mold eating its way through the filth-ridden bathroom tiles. He had possessed no shame, only apathy, only a desire for penance in the form of stained mattresses and kitchen cupboards housing nothing but dust. His living state is pathetic, piteous. He doesn't even have a chair for Fyodor to sit on—it strikes him that Fyodor is the first visitor he's had since moving in last February, a thought that makes him shudder: how lonely do you have to be for Fyodor Dostoevsky to become your first housewarming guest?—and he almost apologises for the accidental slight of a barren apartment as he flicks the light on to illuminate the room.
The light, of course, does not flick on. The light-bulb is bust, as it has been for three months now. Dazai's been meaning to replace it. He really, really has. Perhaps one of these days, he will.
Moonlight filters through the build-up of scum on the curtainless windows, bathing the cramped studio apartment in a sickly, anaemic luminescence. Fyodor makes himself at home without needing to be told—perching himself upon Dazai's bed delicately. He cocks his head to the side—an almost innocent motion, strangely disarming—and regards Dazai with gentle eyes of amethyst.
"Do you happen to have anything to drink in those cupboards, Dazai? I'm feeling rather light-headed, if I'm to be totally transparent. Alcohol has never agreed with me."
He's so polite. It unnerves Dazai, how calm Fyodor can remain, even when finally alone in the home of his chosen prey.
He turns his back on him, moving towards his kitchen island.
"I have tea leaves," Dazai offers, sifting through the bare expanse of his cupboard. "And coffee. Instant, I'm afraid. Nothing fancy."
"What flavour of tea?"
"Uh, I don't know. Just… tea? I think it's green."
"Green tea is fine. Make some for yourself, too, won't you?"
Dazai obliges, preparing a steaming pot of green tea, pouring the contents into two chipped mugs and carrying them over to where Fyodor rests on the bed.
"I think I have some honey, somewhere, if it's too bitter," he mutters, pressing one mug into Fyodor's open palms before dropping down besides him. "I'm not sure. I don't usually drink tea."
"What do you drink, then? Coffee?"
"Alcohol, mostly." Dazai admits, gesturing around the room at the empty bottles of vodka and whisky that litter the barren floorboards, and Fyodor laughs.
"You should take better care of yourself," he chides. "No wonder you look so frail."
Dazai neglects to respond. Instead, he takes a sip of his own tea, barely flinching when the heat scalds his tongue. His thigh is touching Fyodor's as they sit next to each other atop the mattress, skin-to-skin contact if not for the cloth of their trousers between them. Even with the fabric separating their flesh, Dazai can feel the chill of his pallid skin, the gentle, sickly tremor of the other man's feeble frame. It's strangely, sickeningly intimate, in a way, but he finds himself reluctant to pull away. Fyodor, oddly enough, also refrains from motion. What this means for either of them, Dazai does not understand, and nor does he want to.
They sit there, sipping too-hot tea under the wan glow of the lurid moon, in passive silence. Almost peaceful.
It is only when the tea goes cold that the mutual reverie they share in is lifted.
"Why did you come to me tonight?" Dazai finally asks. "If information on me was all you wanted, I'm sure any one of the city rats you employ could have purloined you some answers. Yet you chose to introduce yourself to me directly. A move which could easily have backfired, you know, if you weren't careful."
"I'm always careful, thank you very much." Fyodor rebukes brusquely. "But, I suppose you are right, in your own way. Perhaps I did reveal my hand a little too soon."
"Your hand?"
"You might have guessed this already, I'm sure, but I didn't develop my interest in you out of anything so trivial as a desire to go binge-drinking in the centre of Yokohama. Nor was recuperating from a burgeoning hangover in your waste-dump of an apartment my end goal in contacting you tonight."
Dazai snorts in dark amusement.
"I assumed the simple pleasures of my company wouldn't be enough to placate you."
"Well, quite."
Fyodor sets his empty cup aside, adjusts his coat, leans back against the wall, meticulously uniform in each routine motion.
"In all honesty, Dazai, I'd stepped out tonight with intent to kill."
"To kill me?" Dazai asks—a futile question—and Fyodor nods.
"Initially, I'd wanted to befriend you," he begins. When Fyodor sees the bemused, slightly mocking expression etched on Dazai's face, he swiftly backtracks. "Not like that, I'm afraid. Not genuinely. I desire information on the Port Mafia, you see. I had thought the Demon Prodigy would be my best bet at acquiring it."
"Can't get one of your informants to do it for you?"
"Trailing you was easy work. Intelligent and furtive as you might be, you are just one man, and you are not as impervious to surveillance as you might be inclined to believe. An entire criminal organisation, on the other hand… now that is something much harder to infiltrate. It would be far more easy for me to obtain information from a willing traitor than it would be to spend months planting my own canary."
"I understand,"Dazai replies, and he means it. "What I don't understand is how killing me became a factor in your design."
"As soon as you left the Mafia, you became functionally useless to me. I could no longer hope to squeeze you for any details on the current state of their operations, for you had no way to know of them either. You were dead weight walking. A liability I had invested far too much time and resources in, for my liking."
A deep breath in. An explanation charging up.
"Yet, all that I had learned of you made it clear you could not be allowed to live, regardless of whether I still needed you or not. Not with your intelligence. Not with your… brutality. Our similarities were becoming too apparent to ignore. I couldn't trust that you wouldn't become a threat to me, some day, if our paths were to ever naturally intersect."
Dazai frowns. He doesn't like being compared to Fyodor. Not in that regard, anyway. "I'm not as brutal as you might think, you know. Most of the rumours are just hearsay."
"An attempt at saving your own skin?" Fyodor glances around the apartment at the evidence of Dazai's own self-flagellation, raising an eyebrow in derision. "You didn't strike me as the self-preserving type."
"Not in the slightest, don't worry. I simply wanted to dispel some of my mythos, is all. Is a man not allowed to clear his own name before he dies?"
"He is," Fyodor acquiesces. "But there's no need to do so. Not right now, at least. Fortunately for you, I no longer wish to kill you."
"Is that so?"
"It is. I have… different plans for you, I've decided."
For a moment, there is complete silence—Fyodor does not elect to immediately reveal what 'plans' he has conjured up for Dazai, and Dazai withholds any inquiries for the time being. Amid the quiet twilit room, the two are sat closer than ever—Dazai is not sure which one of them crossed the bed's expanse first, only that they did, and now their shoulders brush along with their thighs, their heads nearly knocking together. This close, Dazai can feel the warmth of Fyodor's breath on his neck, sencha-scented and laced with a bitter undertone of whisky. The length of Fyodor's long, ink-black hair tickles his nape, his furry coat soft against the parts of Dazai's skin that the bandages don't cover. Dazai turns his head slowly to look down at him—finding him strangely serene in this filtered white light.
The powdery shine of the crescent moon lights Fyodor's pale skin in shining, star-bright incandescence. His shadowed eyes are intense, violet, the features of his face delicate and soft. He wears a placid expression on them as he turns his face towards Dazai's—the serendipitous visage of a man awash with inner Arcadian peace is vividly obvious. Dazai's eyes follow the Grecian arch of his nose, the sharp point of his chin and jaw, his slender shoulders and pronounced collarbones, all the way to the bottom and back to the top—the neat part of his black hair, the dark hollows underneath his sunken eyes. Fyodor is not attractive in the conventional sense—a sickly shadow of a man, fitting none of the usual shallow standards Dazai typically holds both himself and others to—and yet he is oddly beautiful like this anyway, wrapped in mystery and allure, laying his desires for Dazai bare underneath the moonlight. His face is soft, his words honest and open.
If Dazai didn't know better, he would have called Fyodor angelic.
Their eyes meet, and the thin twist of Fyodor's colourless lips curve up into a smile.
"Shall I tell you what I have planned for you? You want to know, don't you?"
"I have a feeling you're going to tell me anyway." A dry remark, but not a mocking one.
Fyodor laughs. Slowly, surely, he leans impossibly closer. If Dazai so much as flinches in the wrong direction, their noses will brush, their foreheads will connect. He keeps his gaze firm and impassive, allowing the dark-haired man to play out his games.
"Tonight, as I mentioned, I set out with the intention to kill you. I planned it out, all the way through. Down to the very last increment."
Reaching into the lining of his coat, Fyodor withdraws a knife, sharp and cold. It is curved at the tip, a hunting knife, one meant for the skinning and dissection of soft animal prey. He holds it up to Dazai, long enough for Dazai to get a good, hard look at the weapon that would supposedly have brought about his planned demise.
"I've seen bigger." Dazai quips lightly. Fyodor does not pause to laugh at his innuendo.
"I was going to slit your throat," he continues. "At the end of the night. First, we would drink together. You would order whisky, and I would do the same, all the while watering my own glass down with a flask of bottled water. You'd get drunk, sloppy, and I'd remain poised and ready. When your guard was down, I would've led you somewhere private—perhaps a darkened alley, perhaps a bathroom stall, or underneath a bridge, and then I would've made my move."
The way he speaks of it is almost seductive. Dazai feels himself shift, ever so slightly.
"You wouldn't have felt pain. I would have made sure of that, I am… aware that you have a preference for painless methods of death, when possible. And I am nothing if not generous."
Dazai snorts at this.
"I think it might even have been peaceful for you, you know."
"Peaceful." comes Dazai's listless repetition. Fyodor nods.
"Peaceful, yes. You would've been inebriated, pliant. It would've been simple for me to get you in position and hold you in place. I was planning to sever your carotid artery. That's not a clean death, no, but it is generally a quick one. Unconscious within seconds, dead within minutes. You really wouldn't have felt a thing."
With a long, almost disappointed sigh, Fyodor slides the knife back into his coat, a decisive motion that says this time it is for good.
"And yet I couldn't go through with it. Isn't that strange? A suicidal man and a murderer. The perfect combination, yet the will still managed to escape me."
"What made you change your mind, then? Did I charm you that thoroughly in just one night?"
Fyodor presses his lips together in a thin, almost-smile.
"Not exactly. Not in the way you're thinking. But in a way, yes, I suppose I did find it harder to withhold my… fascination with you, when meeting you face-to-face."
Dazai tilts his head to the side.
"Yeah?"
"Yes, I…" Fyodor trails off for a moment, lost in thought. "You are a surprisingly pleasant conversational partner, I must say. I never thought I would be able to say that to someone."
"That was almost a compliment. Good job."
"Do you not agree?" He sounds almost hurt. "I would've thought that, despite our… disagreements, our conversation tonight had still been mutually enjoyable."
"Would it matter either way?"
"I suppose not," Fyodor concedes. "My request would remain the same regardless of your own feelings towards me."
A deep breath in, his eyes burning a hole straight through Dazai's soul.
"I'd like to formally recruit you," he says at last. " To my own side. I have an… organisation of my own, currently burgeoning. It's small—just myself and a few other men. We could use your abilities, perhaps. Certainly your mind."
"I assume this organisation pursues nothing noble."
"From your perspective, perhaps that's true. Our goals are… undeniably lofty, and unarguably beneficial. The usual qualms people have with us lie more with our methods than anything else. But, well… for the betterment of humanity, some measures are often necessary, wouldn't you agree?"
"Depends on what measures you're talking about. And what you mean by the betterment of humanity."
"I wish for a world free of sin, Dazai. A world free of man's stupidity."
"How boring." Dazai drawls, and Fyodor scoffs.
"Boring?"
"I fail to see the excitement of a utopia, I'm afraid. Call me a heathen all you'd like, but I prefer my planet Earth to be enriched with differences. It's more fulfilling that way."
"You don't understand. Of course."
"I understand you perfectly well, don't you worry." Any trace of mirth in Dazai's voice is snuffed out like a candle, just like that. "I happen to disagree, that's all."
"I fail to see why you would. You've suffered at the hands of sinful, greedy humans as much as anybody, after all. Take the Port Mafia, for example. They've robbed you of your autonomy, stolen your youth. Killed your friend and driven you into hiding. We could prevent these kinds of things so easily, you know. Together. Wouldn't a world without all that pain be so much easier?"
And at last, the touch barrier is broken. Fyodor places an ice-cold hand on Dazai's shoulder, slowly guiding their faces together. It mimics an act of comfort, the gentle placement of his fingers, yet the effect and intention are anything but soothing.
"I could make that go away," he whispers, so close Dazai can taste the remnants of alcohol on his breath. "We could make that go away, if you were to join me. Surely the lengths we go to to obtain our goals do not matter, so long as the end justifies the means?"
An admission, then. A silent one, an implication rather than a confession, but an admission nonetheless. Dazai envisions it clearly, the truth—that Fyodor's 'means' will be wrought with blood and ruin, vengeance descending on the earth with indiscriminate slaughter. As long as him and his goals are served, the death toll will never factor in as a concern. Other people will never be a concern, no matter how focused on humanity Fyodor claims to be.
He is a liar. He is a liar who does not know he is lying, which makes him all the more dangerous.
Still, Dazai allows himself to be brought closer regardless, the proximity heady and intoxicating now, like the earlier effects of the alcohol had never lifted.
"I made a promise to someone," he replies. Almost wistful. "To do good. To be good."
"You've done a piss-poor job of it," Fyodor mutters harshly, all of a sudden. "Rotting away here, drinking yourself to death." His voice is bordering on aggressive. "Doesn't seem very 'good' to me."
"That's not very nice." Dazai chides him.
"You're right. It's not."
Fyodor's lips are trembling with barely supressed anger.
No, not anger. Desperation.
"What's the point in any of it, Dazai? Being good, being bad. None of it has ever gotten you anywhere. Even you can see that. No matter what you do, you still end up alone. Deprived. Wanting. Because the world is rotten, deep down. Built to destroy minds like ours. The idiots around us may feel free to content themselves with revelling in petty distractions, to blind themselves to the state of humanity, but you and I are different. Better. We can change things, together. I swear it."
"Perhaps. Or perhaps you just want an excuse to justify your power trip. Isn't playing God a form of blasphemy, anyway? You might want to rethink your strategy there. And I'm no model Christian, but I'm sure the big guy upstairs wouldn't be on your side in this matter. Whatever happened to 'thou shalt not kill'?"
"Sometimes, bending the rules is necessary, when the greater good is at stake—and I never claimed to consider myself a God," Fyodor corrects him, coldly. "I prefer to think of myself as a messiah, if I must label the role I have been assigned. Even the Son of God himself was misunderstood in his day, you know. I see myself as no different."
"Well, Jesus also never killed anybody, unless I'm mistaken. And he sounded like a lot less of a prick."
Fyodor clenches his jaw.
"So that's really it? You're not even going to think about it?"
"I am thinking about it," Dazai admits at last. "That's the problem."
He sighs, pulling back from Fyodor and standing up. With an agitated, uneven gait, he begins to pace the short length of the room.
"A year ago—not even that, actually—I wouldn't have hesitated. Not because I agree with you, don't get me wrong, but because I wouldn't have cared."
Fyodor's eyes follow him, cold and hollow.
"I didn't care what happened to me. Or anybody else, for that matter."
"And you're telling me that you've suddenly developed a conscience? A heart?"
"No, far from it, actually. I don't… I don't think I'm capable of that, to tell you the truth. Not like other humans."
"That makes two of us."
"No, it doesn't. Because the difference between you and I is that I want to try." Dazai speaks now, with more conviction than he's had in months. "We're both miserable, Fyodor. I've spoken with you enough to recognise the same misanthropy in you that lurks within me, that always has, and maybe always will, to an extent. But I don't revel in my own apathy like you do. I don't celebrate it, and I sure as hell don't enjoy it."
Then, in a smaller voice, yet no less self-assured. "Or, at least, I'm trying not to. I think that counts for something. I… would like it to count, anyway. For Oda's sake."
His voice strengthens back into increased volume, decisive and blunt.
"So my answer is no, I'm afraid. I won't join you. I can't."
"I see."
Finally, Fyodor rises, reaching for the spot on the floor where his hat had been discarded hours earlier. He picks it up, cramming it back over his head and pulling it down over his ears. The earlier belligerence of his manner is gone in a flash, the uncharacteristic hostility he had displayed completely dissipated, as if it had never shown its ugly face to Dazai at all in the first place.
"Then I really can't convince you." The hurt from earlier makes its return.
"You can't."
"A shame." Tightening his coat around himself once more, Fyodor makes for the doorway. "But I won't force your hand, fear not. I am not quite so cruel as to attempt to dispel a man from walking a path he believes to be righteous. Nor would I ask him to renege on a promise made to a dead man. "
"Even if you disagree with it?"
"Even if I disagree with it," Fyodor assents. "Sentimentality is an… admirable quality, however stupid and misplaced it often happens to be. Besides, I still have faith that, in time, you'll come to see my side of things. You won't last six months with the Agency, Dazai. I can tell you that now. They'll bore you to tears."
"A very real possibility." Dazai nods his head in solemn agreement. "But I'd like to try, anyway. If only to fulfil a promise."
"I won't stop you."
"I wouldn't let you."
Fyodor smiles knowingly. A real one, this time, almost warm. Imbued with a newfound fondness for the stubborn, self-righteous man in front of him.
"I know you wouldn't."
His hand lingers on the cold metal of the doorknob, somehow reluctant to leave, surprising even himself.
"I left my number on the counter. You'll be sure to give me a call, won't you? When you change your mind."
"I'd rather not."
It is Dazai's turn to smile back at him, now. And smile he does. Fyodor's persistence is almost amusing, after all. Aggravating as it may be.
"Visit me, from time to time. When cleansing our world of sin gets too boring."
"Perhaps. If you're lucky."
The doorknob turns. Fyodor motions to leave.
"Goodbye, Dazai. It is a shame you couldn't be joining me."
Dazai watches Fyodor as he disappears down the darkened damp of the hallway, a white spectre dressed in furs standing out like the full moon amid a midnight sky, his slight, slender form evaporating into nothing as it is swallowed up by starving shadows. It is a long time before Dazai tears his gaze away; even when Fyodor is gone, he still finds himself drawn to the Stygian reaches of the caliginous third floor. To make sure he's really gone, Dazai thinks as he stares into the dark, but he knows deep down that that's just an excuse.
Part of him wonders about chasing after Fyodor, retracting his declarations of turning over a new leaf—the other man might still be waiting, not the type to give up so easily on something he desires—but he just about manages to squash that urge, thankfully. Dazai closes the door after a moment and sinks back onto his bed, staring up at the broken ceiling fan as it spins a staccato, jerky rhythm. It's strange, almost—Fyodor is undeniably obscure, often confusing, his words frequently manipulative and often Delphic in nature.
Yet, after meeting with him tonight, Dazai is thinking clearer than he has in months.
Fyodor Dostoevsky and Osamu Dazai are mirror images. Laying eyes on him is surreal, for Dazai, like staring into a funhouse mirror. Fyodor is nothing more than a degraded, twisted version of himself. Possessing all of the bad and none of the good, any likeable traits Dazai is selfish enough to think he might possess are sucked right out of Fyodor's barren core. He is a shell, a vessel for perverted justice, morals and worldview as warped as old wood. Dazai looks at him smile, listens to him speak, and sees all he has been, all he might still be, if things do not change. If he does not change.
He has come to like Fyodor, regardless, over the course of the evening. Well—'like' isn't the right term—to attempt to like Fyodor Dostoevsky would be a task near-Sisyphean in its utter futility, but he is at least willing to rebuke his earlier declaration of finding the other man completely uninteresting. Dazai would like to see him again, he thinks, at any rate. Even if only out of twisted intrigue.
But he does not want to join him. And he never, ever, wants to be him.
He had gone back and forth on his promise to Oda, during the months that followed his passing. A shameful admission, able to spark guilt even in someone as devoid as Dazai. But it was true—horribly so. Often, Dazai had debated just putting a gun to his head or a knife to his wrists and being done with it, rather than following through on Taneda's offer of a place at the agency, rather than giving Oda's words any thought and electing to live in the light. Something had kept him from doing it each time, however—something subconscious he had repeatedly tried and failed to name.
Dazai had hated that, at the time. Even amidst the suffocation of grief and isolation, combined with his usual cocktail of various mental illnesses, he was still denied the chance at ending his suffering on his own terms. Even he, famed suicide enthusiast, had suddenly lost all ability to follow through on his own desires. And he couldn't even pinpoint its origin.
Now, however, confronted with the dark recesses of someone else, the bleak reality of the other path open to him, he is starting to see what that thing that saved him might be.
His hatred does not return with this realisation. Instead, Dazai feels something else altogether.
The clock next to his bed strikes twelve. It is the 17th of July, 2011. The air is cold outside, the sky dark, devoid of stars. A blank slate.
Dazai has five months, two weeks, and one day remaining of isolation, as of today, as of just now. His solitude, he is reminded by the clock chime, is nearly over. His new life can soon begin.
There is not much longer to wait now, not at all.
Dazai reaches for the nearest pen and marks another day on the calendar next to the clock in thick, black ink. He lies back, closing his eyes as the gentle arms of sleep envelop him, and patiently awaits his rebirth.