Chrysanthemum Garden [Dazai x Reader] ✓

12. Dazai or Mother

'Are you okay, [Y/N]?' I heard Mother's muffled voice approach as her heels clicked towards me while I tightened a comforting grip around my neck, letting out a coughing fit from the shock of the asphyxiation. Her fingers brought my hand away from my exposed skin and I felt the cold blade of her knife replace the human touch. 'Boss used to be a surgeon, and trust me, there's a really interesting way to –'

'Try it.' Dazai threatened, stern and clear.

I did not retain enough energy in me to lift my lids and look at the scene but, judging by her mocking giggles, it seemed he may have threatened her with an object of comical peculiarity – or else she was used to being threatened.

'My, my! It seems like Mafia blood still runs in you, after all!' She pulled the blade away from my neck and sat beside me, tugging my arms her way so that my weakened figure limped over to her pounding chest. 'Come on, why are you hesitating? Shoot me if you dare.'

It didn't take me entirely by surprise to hear these words that hinted that Dazai – the same person that found me alone on a public bench by "coincidence" and persuaded his colleagues to allow me a chance to redeem myself from non-voluntary crimes (a seemingly buoyant and sympathetic character) – was holding Mother at gunpoint, but I forced my eyelids open to confirm the scene.

Despite alluding to being composed and having the tyrannous courage of holding a pistol at the end of his fingertips, his eyes looked as though they silently revolted against the stance and tried to talk him out of pulling the trigger.

'Oh, my bad! I forgot you initially planned to have her killed, Dazai,' Mother sighed in relief, slithering her fingers around the muscle of my jaw to instruct my eye to look directly into the muzzle of the polished pistol. 'Charming, attractive and a real beauty of a man with naturally curly hair, isn't he, [Y/N]? How odd it is you don't see past all that – a true tragedy; have you no memory of him being inclined to kill you for the liability you were when you first moved to Yokohama?'

He took a sour breath and lowered his gun, intensifying his glare towards her as Mother spat her words without remorse. She grinned as he took a couple of steps back to lean against the brick wall behind him.

'It isn't very "you" to give up so easily, Dazai.'

'The two of us have a mission of our own to complete today – those that contrast one another,' he replied, tilting his head to stretch the constrictive bandages that enveloped his neck. 'The truth has to be spoken at some point, and I do not plan on keeping [Y/N] away from the truth forever like some people have been doing for years.'

Mother hushed me as I attempted to call out for him, wrapping her arm around my shoulder to hold me closer to her functioning heart; it beat at a tranquil rhythm, making her seem strangely calm – calmer than one would expect for someone to be when held at gunpoint.

'He's not worth your breath, [Y/N],' Mother whispered, laying her knife on the ground between us so that she could brush my hair with her fingers. 'Dazai almost – just almost – had you killed when you first moved here, you know. Hmm, what was it he said?' – she looked at the brunet provocatively and pouted as though she was trying to recall a line from a forgotten poem. 'What did you say about her then, Dazai?'

'"She has a strong ability that could serve the interests of the Mafia, but it is a shame she cannot control it,"' Dazai recalled it for her, placing his hand over the pocket of his coat where the stiff flap of a leather peeked out.

That was his wallet. The same one involved in a trade we'd made on the day we met... it now meant that no tangible asset of ours was kept in each other's possession, no longer bound metaphysically...