Chrysanthemum Garden [Dazai x Reader] ✓

26.5 Hanahaki: The perfect suicide

'Was this your idea of a perfect suicide?'

The final beams of the day kissed the care home goodbye as the sun descended into the horizon, leaving behind a cool zephyr blowing gently against the curtains left parted wide over a gaping window.

Hues of pink and purple conquered the care home where nature's spotlight cast itself upon Osamu Dazai, who could be seen sitting painfully still with his head limping back on a mattress behind him.

Spread around his dancing locks of brown hair were plucked petals forming a halo, the flower they originated from lying dormant in his bandaged hand, and the petals that remained attached to its disk fluttered gently in contrast to his lack of movement.

His beige trenchcoat mantled his erect legs, the collar stained red from a wound on his lower which he had kept covered in an attempt to avoid major blood loss before he had gone limp and it had fallen on his lap.

A minute of absolute silence passed before he began showing signs of life again, lifting his head from the mattress slowly with a light chuckle that soon burst into a taunting laughter, this that resulted in having several flowers that trailed a grievous white line from his lips to be inhaled and choke him; he forced himself to cough them out (never once wiping from his face that smirk his audience despised) and painted the floorboards beneath him with blood and fallen petals.

'Have you heard of the "Hanahaki Disease", widower?' he addressed the darkness, grinning with cold eyes that pierced right through her while he wiped his bandaged wrist across his chin. 'Hanahaki is an illness born from one-sided love that takes the body of the hopeless lover as a hostage, growing a beautiful, deadly garden until the feeling is return – if it's ever returned; I must be a romantic to love the idea of dying in the hands of something that someone we love would kill for.'

'I do not love her –'

'I don't recall specifying anyone in particular,' he smirked with amusement, pressing into his wound further in search of the bullet that had impaled his insides. 'But congratulations! You're becoming more and more fluent in lying with every passing year – just like your dear husband.'

He lifted the flower from his side and analysed the petals still attached, their surfaces dancing in violet as dusk approached. His eyes scanned the room around him in the hopes of acquainting with his surroundings for this particular night, and he passed his eyes swiftly over the nuzzle of the gun aimed directly at him as if it were a harmless device.

'Seems like the truth hurts, doesn't it?' he mocked as he attempted to pull himself up, the bandages that constrained his exposed arms stretching under his muscles as they sought the support of the mattress to stand on both feet.

He heaved out a relieved groan when he succeeded at last, clutching his abdomen tightly while stalking slowly to the window to lean against its chilling sill.

'Isn't it about time you opened up to the only thing you have left? His child, I mean?'

The widower pulled the trigger, provoked with anger, but her unsteady hand had driven the bullet to shoot past his shoulder and away into the dimming horizon to never be seen again.

Despite never admitting it, she was petrified of him; Dazai had learned everything about her from years of working together under the same Boss and hours of reading private letters that exposed the raw disdain that lived under the arrogant skin she wore every day, and he knew how to easily manipulate her into insanity – he knew how to manipulate anyone into insanity. But that's not what scared her the most.

Dazai had the power to only start the game whenever the time was suitable for him.

The brunet could easily make her fail her mission entirely if she missed a single beat, and all those years she had spent preparing herself and ability could easily come crashing down in a matter of seconds; it only took a louder step creaking as she walked, a pause of a second too short, and –