𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐀, d.osamu | ✓

𝟬𝟬𝟳

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( 007. ALL THINGS REAL )

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✧ﾟ･:┊MUSIC SOUNDED MUCH BETTER WHEN LISTENED THROUGH EARBUDS RATHER THAN A LOUDSPEAKER.

The music sounds closer that it ought to be without bursting one's eardrums and you can hear every beat. It was much better to listen to music through earbuds in a library. There was never any interference from outside to confuse you and leave you with a choice to choose between picking between the sounds of the song and the outside or give up listening to music altogether.

Maya scribbled down gibberish into her notebook, concentrating more onto the music than her Literature homework.

Someone tapped her shoulder, and even though it was just this once that somebody disturbed her, it was abrasive all the same. Gritting her teeth, she turned around only to yelp noiselessly and drop her pencil, which clattered to the wood-covered floor.

Dazai smiled at her smugly, moving to take a seat beside her. "Hello," he greeted, a hushed whsiper tumbling past his lips, slow and like a rhythm in contrast to the creaking of the chair he placed himself upon.

She nodded in acknowledgement, turning back to her work, more motivated than ever to complete her work now that Dazai was here. Because she knew that if Dazai was here, he was going to take her somewhere, and she would forget about her homework and it would be out-weighed with the living mystery who called himself Dazai Osamu.

"What're you doing?"

"Better question," said the voice in his head, "how did you know I was here?"

"I may or may not have asked the little lady in the café you work at,"

Maya sighed internally, simply chuffed that he didn't go as far as ask her sisters. She didn't want to carry the burden of controlling her sisters from calling their mother and reporting the alleged "crime" she had perpetrated by talking frequently with a man who was older than her by four solid years. Also, she didn't want them to find out that Dazai was a former Port Mafia excecutive. She sighed and continued a her work of scrawling on words that she thought made sense for her Literature homework.

Meanwhile, Dazai leaned over and read what all Maya wrote down, successfully able to make sense of her messy, indecipherable words writen in calignious ink.

"Excuse me if you think I don't make sense," he read out of her assignment, "I've never been in love, I wouldn't know what to do if I was,"

She looked down, her nail running up and down her cheek, grazing the skin there. "Um, Literature assignment," she said, cheeks red from embarrassment. No one had ever bothered to read her assignments out loud before. "Our professor wanted us to write a two-page essay about our take on love,"

"Who said that?" he asked, extending a finger to trace it below the lines he had read out.

Maya shrugged, jutting out her bottom lip, "Dunno,"

"You said it, then," he said, leaning back in his chair.

"I guess." She bit her lip, a habit she had aquired ever since she was little. It was a theory, at the time to her, if you feel pain, then you're real. "Hey, Dazai," she said, picking up the man's attention. "What's your take on love?"

It was a rather stupid question to ask.

In truth, Maya wanted to really know; she wanted to know what a man, who hadn't recieved any form of love and instead had gotten a thousand different kinds of pain in exchange of asking for a little less pain.

"I think it's just an illusion," he said, an answer he had been thinking of for a long time but no one ever asked the question so he never said it.

"True." she said, bitting her lip and then releasing if from her teeth's grip before continuing. "To be in love is to delude oneself into being in love. When in reality, you're just running low on serotonin." She paused, tracing the edges of her notebook and feeling Dazai's unmistakable gaze on her but not looking up to meet it with her own. "Also, being in love is being selfish. I don't want to be selfish,"

"I don't think you, or me, or anyone can ever stop being selfish." He rested his chin against the surface of the table. "We're just going to have to accept that and move on with our lives,"

"Our miserable lives, you mean,"

He smiled at her, "Precisely. So you can see the reason why I wish for a pretty death?"

She mirrored Dazai, her arms spread our in front of her on the table and her chin resting on the table. "Yes, but I also see it's a selfish reason."

He raised a brow.

"I think that if you just opened your eyes and for once outed yourself, you'd see how many people care about you. Maybe you wouldn't want to die so much then,"

He didn't say anything, she was right. But that didn't change the fact that he wanted to die. It didn't change the fact, that he, Dazai Osamu, was a selfish person, no different from every selfish bundle of bones on this planet.

They faced each other, looking into the other's eyes. This was probably the moment where people kiss— she supposed— but instead, Maya told him about how much she felt that they weren't real. "We are controlled by people whom we don't know," she told him, then proceeding to tell him, "I hated school,"

The main reason she hated school was the school bells; to be controlled by somebody who invented school bells, to be told when to eat and when to study what and when to go home. It was no different from psychological torture, a torture she had to endure for four years of her life, wherein she had to suppress the urge to run out and never return. In the end, you become a piece of crap who can't walk or speak normally without relying on what school taught you.

If Dazai hadn't laughed in the middle, Maya would've rambled on forever. He leaned towards her, "You're so cute, Maya-chan,"

Red bloomed under the skin of her face, her ears becoming red and her pale skin full of color. Nobody had ever called her cute. Ever. She bit her lip to stop from smiling like the idiot she was; for the moment, at least, she kept herself from thinking that he probably meant it. Because Dazai Osamu always meant whatever he said, and it was slightly annoying. It annoyed her that she couldn't even accuse him of lying because whatever he said, he meant it— saying she was cute and all.

She slouched in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, "I'm not cute,"

He waved his hand as a sign of dismissal, "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Maya-chan."

It was almost hilarious how his personality switched from goofy to serious in a second as frequently as night and day. One second he was the funniest and annoying person on the planet, lazing around, then the next second he was this person who could kill one with just a look. The fact intrigued her, and she wondered how he hadn't been torn apart yet.

He never failed to amuse her.

He was and epitome of beauty and pain and all things real.

And she may have just been a bit more than infatuated with him.

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