The Wild Geese || DAZAI OSAMU/CHUUYA NAKAHARA

[六] SCALPEL, REVITALIZED.

You very hesitantly go back home, your hands in your pockets and a cigarette finally in your mouth. You nervously grope your pockets to make sure you had everything there and not left behind in your car and turn the keys in your house lock.

Your house was fairly undecorated. There was no personality in your house, you simply just lived in the shadows and remains of the previous house owners before you. There were a few ashtrays littered around the house: you supposed those were decorations. Being a fucking nicotine addict.

When you pull your head up to face the front, you're met with a man sitting on your couch. He was staring into the blank television, and upon seeing your face staring back at him through the screen, he smiled, very slightly.

You immediately pull a gun on him.

"What the fuck?" You snap. "How'd you get in here?"

"Ah, put the gun down—"

"Tell me or I'm gonna empty another fucking bullet into you."

"I broke in, with a hairpin," He fishes out a thin, black hairpin from his pants pocket. He says so in a cheery, jovial manner. It only stokes your anger even more. You eyed him suspiciously before unloading the gun and putting it on your dinner table.

"You one of his?" You ask. The weight of the last word quickly hits Dazai like a train. His face turns grim, serious, dark, unformidable.

"Long story, but yes. I was."

"Well, that makes the two of us," You murmured.

He pats down the cushion next to him, smiling at you with what seemed to be a mix of beguilement and sympathy, the kind of look you give to a child wailing because it wants candy. That kind of look you give to a limping kitten on the road. You raise an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Let me help you change," he says. You're almost offended, thinking that he was on some sort of saviour mission to rescue damsels in distress before he pointed to his neck. "The bandages. They're soaked."

"Why should I let you?"

"Because we both never had control."

You hesitate, before walking over to a drawer in the living room. You pull out two rolls of white gauze, walk towards the couch, and sit down next to him, facing him, your legs crossed. You begin to take the bandages off.

For some reason, Dazai thought, the act felt forbidden to watch, like he was watching you bathe through a crack in the wall, like a peeping tom, his hand fisted around his cock, lecherously watching you perform for nobody but the male voyeur in your head, in the small space between your eyes, a small pocket of hope that you were still a female and not some monster that you made yourself out to be.

You don't know why you let him. He tries to understand. You don't want to understand, you don't want to know.

He had a searching, sweet look on his face. The red bandages come off. He unrolls the gauze and presses one end of it gently against your burning skin. Then he begins to roll it around, like you were going to dress as a mummy for Halloween, encasing your neck in white, pulling the gauze under your arm, over your chest, and over your shoulder.

"What did he do to you?" He asks, very neutrally, his voice calm and unmoving.

"Nothing too bad," you say. You're not lying, you think. "I'm glad he didn't do anything worse."

"Mori has a strange taste for little girls," he says. He recalls when a friend of his had told him he walked in on his boss arguing with a small, blond child, naked and defiant, with her bare bottom turned to him.