Bamboo Grove [Atsushi x Reader] ✓

4. ᴀʟʟ ᴛɪɢᴇʀꜱ ꜱʜᴏᴜʟᴅ ᴅɪᴇ

Atsushi poked his finger into the crack of the cowrie shell. Eyes stinging from an earlier breakdown and lips numb from being shut for hours, he lay his cheek on the tabletop, his hair limply brushing his lashes as he blinked. The cowrie was one of your most treasured possessions, not for what it was nor who had given it to you, but rather because it reminded you of Atsushi... After all, he had been this broken beauty's namesake.

He wondered whether this cowrie and he shared a soul in two different bodies. While it wasn't particularly unlikely for a seashell to break under fitting circumstances, it sure was a timely coincidence that the shell had broken when Atsushi felt something in him break. Had it been his heart? He couldn't say for sure; he'd never experienced an ache so intense.

In a world where gifts existed, he wished justice would not be so harmful. Dazai had told him that what the law considered "just" was a weapon that could neither protect nor save people; Atsushi should plead for no exceptions.

'Atsushi is broken,' he mumbled monotonously, retrieving his nail from the cowrie with a sigh, dragging his cheek across the wood to focus on the seat before him. 'Are you going to look for another Atsushi...?'

Though unmotivated to do so, Atsushi lifted his temple from the tabletop and rubbed the reddened skin, cushioning his cheek on the palm of his hand. Hair hanging low and fists clenched tightly over your knees, your silence delivered anxiety.

'Atsushi's broken...' he repeated, melancholic, pushing the cowrie gently towards the middle of the table for you to see. Your lack of reaction, lack of voice or any resemblance to whom he used to know prompted him to bite his shivering lip and hang his head mere inches over the table, concealing his eyes behind pale fingers.

He didn't wish for you to see him cry... not again.

Unable to tend to Atsushi's tears, Kyouka kept her eyes locked on the bowl of tea on rice before her, hissing at Lucy as she attempted to take the stone-cold dish from the counter. Kyouka was sure—rather, tried to convince herself that Atsushi would sooner or later accept the meal... his stomach would start rumbling and he'd be obliged to snap from his trance. Patience was the key.

'You've been waiting for hours,' Lucy reminded the younger girl as she plopped down onto the barstool beside her, easing her elbow onto the counter behind her to look in Atsushi's direction. 'That is a perfectly good bowl of tea on rice; I would have it myself if I were you. Atsushi's not coming back to reality unless a miracle happens.'

Kyouka heaved a restless sigh and looked over her shoulder towards the albino, brows tightened at the sight of his loneliness addressing the creations of his mind. Despite the empty seat in front of him, the girl which he spoke to was tangible albeit silenced and still, listening to all he said without a word in return. Atsushi no longer knew what to expect from her to let his mind fill in the blanks...

Lucy hummed into the silence and tucked her knees against the counter, forcing her elbows onto the wood to puff up her cheeks and sigh. 'From what I've heard, [Y/N] was someone special to him. What exactly happened between the two of them for him to be so, well, like that?'

Kyouka knew very little about you to say for sure. She did not usually attempt to engage Atsushi into talking about you but knew better than to take his responses as anything more than a subjective and biassed account. She'd not known about you at all until she stumbled upon a conversation Ranpo and the Agency's director were having concerning an apparent "friend of Atsushi's". Kyouka's awareness of context was limited, but she gathered that any old friend of the albino could have only been an acquaintance from the orphanage...

"They grew up in the orphanage," Ranpo told her once, dusting the sugar from the corners of his lips from a week's worth of candy Kyouka had bribed him with. The girl waited for more information, willing to exchange yet another chocolate bar she hid in the sash of her attire to cheer Atsushi up with. Whether Ranpo had seen through this or not, it did not matter.