𝐇(𝐀)𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 | yandere! dazai osamu

11 / 15

Your vision swims in swirls of dark, muted colours.

You blink away the dots specking your sight.

You're on your side on the floor. You can feel something tickle you, and when you swat it away, your hand comes in contact with something warm and fuzzy: a mouse. They all scatter away from you when you sit up on your arms. The candelabrum is toppled to its side and the fires extinguished. You quickly set it back up to save the wax. Your limbs still feel spotty, like they had been packed full of cotton and static, but when you wobble back onto your feet and try to smack the static away by hitting it against the wall, you feel like you're gonna be okay. Silver moonlight.

Now it's night.

Dust clouds creak from above—you look up. The ceiling had no hole from where you had thought you had fallen through. You limp over to the switch and press it. The staircase ladder unfolds itself calmly as if nothing happened. You decide not to take second chances and close it off. You decide to hurry off to the library before that...thing came back for you again. You try to straighten out your limp and go for a light jog back.

You check the plastic bag: you had finished two bags of dried fruit, the sake bottle remained unopened, and the crab-meat can was yet to be consumed. Maybe you could use the spoon from the kitchen if you needed to. Your hand hits something cold. You squint and let out a soft sigh when you saw it was the two chemical bottles.

Speaking of which, did you know what they were even for? You set out the candelabrum on the table and quickly light it again and pull out all the sheets of paper that were stashed away in your bra: a cut-off photograph of a man, a piece of paper where you had written everything that was happening to you, and a new piece of paper that mirrored what you and Dazai had stated earlier. You tapped your pencil on the table and scanned the vast library behind you, before quickly jotting down what you had seen.

- Was in the attic, heard some mice. Saw something that looked not so human. Bent its body unnaturally and then turned blue? And had a halo at the back. Then broke through the floor but it seemed normal when I woke up again???

You let out a heavy sigh, pick up the papers and tuck it into your bra, before taking the candelabrum and walking over to the shelves of books. It was a tight squeeze—you felt like you were being trapped between rows of teeth of a great monster, with cobwebs in the corner glinting menacingly at you under the moonlight and heavier books creaking under your every move above your head. You wearily eyed them.

You were uber careful with the candelabrum, afraid that you were going to set fire to the whole damn thing. Yet as you scanned through the rows and rows of books, all filled with ancient-to-post-war Japanese and East Asian works of fiction, something—

THUD!

—falls to your left.

You flinch and nearly feel your heart gasp clean out of your chest cavity, fingers tightening around the neck of the candelabrum.

"Jesus Christ!" You hiss under your breath. 

You carefully peer over the amber lights of the fire and your eyes narrow suspiciously at the title.

TOXICOLOGY: THE BIOCHEMICAL PROFILE.

You set the candelabrum on the floor and pull out the piece of paper with the chemicals written down on it, and carefully put it on your thighs. You lift the book and begin to flip through the end into the index—one thing you remembered clearly from school was how the Index would be one of the most helpful things you could do if you were trying to find something. Your finger goes down the tiny, tiny print of writing, going down to the H section, and your heart catches in your throat when the tiny print read: