The Wild Geese || DAZAI OSAMU/CHUUYA NAKAHARA

[八] OCEAN SECRETS, RECEDING.

You find out that Chuuya, despite all his confidence and power, was actually a lightweight when it came to alcohol. You watch as his face grew redder and redder, shouting obscenities into his phone.

"Hey," You quietly say. You're not drunk, not enough anyways, but the seriousness of your voice is enough to make Chuuya look at you. "Can I tell you a secret?"

That piques his interest. He leans a cheek on a gloved hand. "What kind?"

"I was the reason why Oda got killed."

Chuuya sat there, unbelieving, before he takes his hat off, runs a gloved hand through his hair, before putting it back on. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

He looks at you incredulously, expecting you to continue.

"I betrayed him. I found the kids because I got lost, and they told me I smelled a lot like their caretaker. We both smoked."

"Christ, how old were you?"

"I don't know. Not important."

He stares at his drink. "Do you regret it?"

You laugh, and it was that hysterical flute-like laugh, that was on the verge of tears, that sort of pitched lunacy. "Do I regret it? Man, I close my eyes and can still hear them cry. They never stop crying. They're always there. Maybe they'll quieten down after I die. Silence unnerves me. Where are they crying? Where's the children?"

He doesn't say anything consoling but does pour you another glass of gin. You gulp it in one fell swoop.

"Well, now I told you shit, tell me something about you. 50/50." And something about this seemed so old-school, so normal, like you were on a blind speed date with this man, exchanging anecdotes, instead of being two serial murderers as mafiosos in the underground society of Yokohama.

He thinks he can trust you, Chuuya thinks so, and not because he was drunk; your jarring confession had left him sober, but because you looked as closed as a clam, and didn't seem to care whether or not he told you or not. There's a certain corpse-like feature to you that makes you look like the dark side of the moon, a secret confidante, an abyss to scream into.

And he tells you about how he struggled with his identity and place in this cruel, dog-eat-dog world, his connection to some ancient God that ended up questioning the validity of his existence, that left him not knowing why he had been under Government control in the first place.

"I felt emotionless—inhumane. I was unable to understand the depth of human emotions."

For some reason, his words struck a chord in you. You pour him a glass. You wonder if your anger and frustration of being marginalised as Mori's victim was the same as his. You raise your glass.

"Cheers to the fucked-up kids of the Port Mafia."

The same light of the bar transitions to the ones in the Agency.

Fukuzawa stands at the scene of the crime, his hands in the sleeves of his jade kimono. He diligently listened to what Dazai had to say after he had checked up on Atsushi—he needed surgery for the bullet wound in his shoulder, while Kyouka was sitting on one of the infirmary beds.

"She went back because it's easier." Is all Fukuzawa says. And with those words, Fukuzawa turned away to his office, nodding in acknowledgement at what Kunikida and Yosano were discussing—something to do with the reparations and repair bills. When Atsushi asks what he meant by that, knowing that he would never go back to the orphanage, Dazai said, without looking at him,

"Atsushi, have you ever had a broken tooth? Or a baby tooth that's about to fall out? Have you ever constantly put your tongue on it just because it hurts, both your tongue and your teeth? It's like that. She went back to the place where she hurt because then she knows why she's hurting, instead of playing guessing games, trying to lick spots that don't have wounds thinking they're cut. She's trying to organise it."

You sneeze. Was someone talking about you?

Of course they were. You felt your head throb from the aftereffects of the alcohol. You know you're slipping when instead of going home, you pop open another bottle of alcohol, down it with no mercy, and take another breath of the cigarette.

You lean against the railing of the port and lean your head against your hands, closing your weary eyes. You try to imagine that you've jumped off the Port, with rocks in your pockets, nothing but cold water lapping against your cheeks, filling up your lungs, until you've joined the corpses of the bodies that opposed the Port Mafia, full of bullet holes and wounds that would never get closed in the merciless water. And when you tilt your head to try and get your ear closer down, something in your brain sidetracks—something clicks, and you can see flashes of a turquoise green chair, leather belts, the gleam of a needle. You can't move, can't scream, just seemingly stare into this feeling that you're having, a shred of your pain long forgotten, ingrained in your muscle memory—

"Fuck!" Your arm jerks, an involuntary move, and you watch with narrowed eyes when you drop the burning cigarette, down, down, down, splashing into the water. You roll your eyes, take the final sip of the drink, and when you hit rock bottom, you toss it into the water.

"Surely that can't be good for the environment," Someone says. You turn around and you're met with the familiar face of Dazai, his face grim but still smiling and parts of his arms plastered with band aids. You sneer at him before turning your head back to the blue, blue sea.

"It's you," You sourly greet. You roll your eyes and make it so that your body doesn't warm up to his presence—trying to reduce him into nothing. Make him feel worthless. Make him question you why you're doing it, just so you can continuously say 'so?'

You bleakly stare forwards. Dazai wants to comment on how steep your descent seemed to be, as if you were a thread spool being yanked off its spine by a singular man, spinning around and around and around, being used to sew together the fabric of the former glory days of the Port Mafia, before he disposed of you into the Ocean.

He opens his mouth to comment on that—but then you shoot him with such a look of loathing that he blinks in silence.

"Can you shut up about suicide for a moment? I don't want to hear it. Take your self-pity somewhere else. Leave me the fuck alone."

"Wasn't going to talk about it but you've reminded me what I had to do this afternoon," He says, playfully. You scoff.

"Wonderful. Have fun."

He then notices something on your wrist—a faint, white line that looks like the English alphabet for F and A fused together. You notice him staring and chuckle sourly.

"Wanna know what that is? I would grade myself when I was younger. A meant I did well. F meant I should kill myself."

"Which one did you get more often?"

"F, besides," You shake your wrist so that your sleeve falls and covers the marks. "Don't remember when I wouldn't get it. Mori would always bring me back anyways. Stubborn bastard."

Dazai then looks forwards, as if unable to look at you in the eyes, almost as if you were this constantly opened wound, the skin red and raw, scratched clean open.

"Tell me about yourself," He bluntly states.

"Can't figure me out?" You say.

'No,' He wants to say. He wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you, pat you down of anything you were hiding, because you had a strategic trick of making it seem like you were a deep, deep archaeological dig; once you thought you found something, there would be far stranger, graver things underneath, waiting for you to dig and wonder well, how did this happen?

"I'll tell you since..." You trail off. Something in your eyes flickers off, then flickers back on. "I'm in a good mood."