Give Yourself To Me

Chapter One

    Click. Clack. Click. Clack. Atsushi frowned. Why was.. anybody coming down here for? Down into the cold basement. Completely made of stone. Only a window that was just a bit above the ground, let blue moon light shine into the room. And of course, the twelve year old boy was curled up in a corner. The farthest away from the moonlight.

  He'd been in the middle of.. sleeping? Sleeping wasn't the right word. It was more passing out than anything. His stomach felt empty. His mouth and throat felt dry. His body hurt. Atsushi felt his hopes rise up. Maybe.. it was the headmaster. And he was gonna finally let him out! That— or provide him with food and water. He'd take anything. He really would.

  But he was not met with the headmaster, as he thought he'd be. The figure was obscured from the dark, not in the moonlight quite yet. "Atsushi Nakajima." The voice sounded like maybe it belonged to a young adult..? And it sounded so.. scary. Serious, yeah. Scary.

  "..." Atsushi lifted his head a little to acknowledge his name being said. He watched as the figure seemed to kneel down, and a tray was slid towards him. He blinked a few times and looked down at it. Food.. that was food! But- should he accept food from a stranger? A person he couldn't even see?

  "You're pathetic." The voice spoke. "I would've expected something better from the man eating were tiger." The voice sounded.. bored now. "Eat. I can't talk to you when you're half dead." The food looked a lot better than what he was normally served in the orphanage.

  Atsushi reached a hand down and picked up a piece of food off the tray, taking a bite out of it. The cooking was... phenomenal. And he found himself easily eating it within minutes. Sure, he didn't have water. But- he most definitely wasn't going to complain at all. The food was enough. "Barbaric." The voice spoke again. It sounded disgusted, this time.

  Atsushi frowned. Him? Was he barbaric? He mentioned something of the man eating weretiger. But he'd almost convinced himself.. that he wasn't. "Who.. are you?" Atsushi's voice was weak.

  The figure sighed, and took a step into the moonlight. Not a young adult at all. If he had to guess, he'd say the boy was around sixteen. He had messy brown hair, and bandages covering half of his face. A black coat over his shoulders and a white shirt with a black tie and pants and dress shoes. His eyes looked.. not dead, but most definitely not alive either. As if stuck between those two worlds. "Dazai Osamu." Dazai's hands were resting in his pockets. He took more steps. Out of the moonlight, but closer to Atsushi. He knelt down in front of the boy, who had gotten tense at the older boy getting closer.

  "How would you like to leave this place, Atsushi Nakajima?" Dazai squatted down so he was eye level with the other. Even though Atsushi was desperate to leave this place...

  "Where.. would I be going..?" The boy asked softly. It wasn't a matter of if Atsushi could leave the orphanage. It was a matter of whether or not he could go somewhere better than the orphanage. After all, why would he leave if he'd just end up some place worse..?

  Dazai grinned. It wasn't a heart warming, happy grin. The aura- was like the exact opposite of what a grin should be like. "I can provide you with means of living, a job, food, water, shelter... a lot better than here. And all you have to do is...."

  "I can't kill anyone." The wording of the white haired boy who was strapped down to a chair- it made Mori tilt his head just a little bit. Atsushi was not strapped down because he didn't want to be there. He was strapped down because he could very much kill someone if not kept under control. He could kill someone.

  So that word choice... not "I don't want to kill anyone", not "I refuse to kill anyone". But, it was "I can't kill anyone." It felt like an oddly accurate way to put somebody else in the mafia's philosophy. Perhaps.. there could be use for this boy. Mori did have to wonder- what actual potential did Dazai see in Atsushi? He'd just brought both Akutagawa and Gin in, hadn't he? Why did he want Atsushi here?