BUNGO STRAY DOGS SHORT STORIES

Foes & Friends

Brief summary: an alternative universe where soukoku live in a Boarding school.

"The hallways they echoed and groaned" - Halsey

A duo ran down the halls of an old school. The soft glow of the moon shone through the Gothic styled windows that lined the walls. The nights shadows painted themselves over the duos skin. Dazai and Chuuya ran, hands intertwined as Dazai pulled the other down the hall. Their footsteps echoed against the wooden floors that creaked under their weight. Voices hollering for the two young boys to stop running could be heard behind them, they were out numbered. Half a dozen pair of footsteps could be heard running down the same hall, but they had gravely misjudged how much faster the boys were.

Trailing behind Dazai, the red-headed boy began to wheeze and cough and began to slow down his rather fast paced running into lagging steps. Dazai felt the weight pull his arm back and made a sharp turn into another corridor. Dazai and Chuuya weaved through the crowd of night students who were departing from the end of their classes, and snuck away into a storage room that was used to hold the lost and found boxes for the school. Dazai put his ear up to the door and listened as the voices and footsteps began to grow fainter and fainter. Contrary to the laboured breathing that was escaping Chuuya's lips, as he held at his throat and gasped for air.

"Jesus Christ— where's your inhaler?" Dazai felt around Chuuya's uniform as he located the device with his quick hands, lifting it to the boy bedside him. "Breathe in.. out.. easy does it..there you are— ow!"

"Gimme that!" Chuuya snatched away the inhaler and breathed deeply as he puffed on it. He sighed and let the medicinal gas fill up his lungs and ease his burning throat. "Thought I was done for."

"Could ya maybe not hit me next time?" Dazai scowled as he rubbed the top of his head, looking at Chuuya with a rather disgruntled expression, over exaggerating his hurt.

"Sure, when you don't act like my goddamn mother." Chuuya spat back and pocketed the small device back into his breast pocket.

"Did you drop the files?"

"Did I drop the- no dumbass! But you would of." Chuuya grumbled the last part and pulled out the cream coloured files that held the information they had been waiting for. Dazai reached for it and looked through them, skimming through each transcript and turning his back on a rather curious Chuuya.

"Guess you really do have a mother." Dazai said a little too surprised as he handed one of the two files to Chuuya. There lay all the young boys information, his birthdate, the place of his birth and paragraphs upon paragraphs of information about his parents, origins and ability. In the dim light of the rather bleak cupboard Dazai read through his own, eyes narrowing and eyebrows creasing into a distasteful expression. Unlike Chuuya's promised treasure Dazai's slip had been rather blank, and vague about his parents and even his birthdate, stating that he was born in June but no number was added beside the rather lonely month. "And I guess my mother really didn't want me."

'Those words should have never left your mouth.' Chuuya thought as he looked over at the other who was trying to conceal his utter sorrow and disappoint. Chuuya squinted under the light and looked over his shoulder. "Maybe I dropped one of the-"

"You didn't. There's a reason why mine was kept in a safe.. they knew I would come looking. They are hiding the rest of it somewhere else.." Dazai's hateful distaste for the school he was raised in seeped out into the edges of his voice. Hope beginning to shrivel up and wilt as he trailed off.