There is more than one of him

Chapter 6

Calling their parents was the first thing he did once he reached a cafè a couple of streets away. He had told them he was going to try finding him one last time. He knew they weren't expecting him to find anything. The both of them had long accepted him dead. What would they say, if he told them his brother was alive?

He had no choice but to find out. So he called them.

"Hey honey." His mothers voice was soft and comforting, she was expecting him to be sad and crying needing someone to tell them he was going to be alright.

"Hey Mom" He answered, his voice was -even from his perspective- unexpectedly empty.

"Are you okay?" his mother asked, immediantly sensing the strange tone in his voice.

"Is Dad nearby?" He asked instead of answering.

"Yes, he's upstairs, should I call him down?" She asked, she was getting anxious, her sons voice was giving of a weird emotion. It was full of pain, but not like it had been before. It wasn't a desperation anymore.

It was no regret about not succeeding. The voice scared her, it meant he had hadn't come out empty handed this time, but what he found didn't seem to be good.

She had tried to forget about her second son, telling herself he was alive somewhere out there, but she wasn't brave enough to search for him, afraid of what she would find. Outwardly she pretended he was dead, it was easier this way. Her husband she knew, did the same. That was one of the reasons, why she didn't like it when her son went after one clue or another. She didn't want to know, at least not if he was acctually dead in the end.

The voice of her son, she couldn't make out, what it meant, but it meant something.

"Yes, that would be really nice"

And so she did. "Ill be right back" she said into the phone, put it down and went to get her husband.

"dear, Itsuki is one the phone. I think he found something this time, I'm not sure if it's good though. His voice sounds so strange, I can't tell" Her husband immediantly left everything and went with his wife back to the phone.

"We're listening dear, what happened?" His father said.

"I found him" Itsuki stated. He left that statement empty in the air, adding nothing.

In his parents head and faces, which Itsuki of course couldn't see, there were countless emotions at once. Happyness, their son had been found. Fear, was he dead or alive. Anger, if he had been in Yokohoma all along, why had no one notified them? He was still registered as missing and the face couldn't be all that differnt. Sadness, they had failed as parents, if he was alive or dead, they had failed to find and protect him. All those surpressed emotions were coming back to the surface at the mear mentioning of him.

After a long pause their son continued his sentence.

"He's not dead" What a weird way to say he's alive.

But Neither of them noticed that. Itsuki himself had said not dead instead of alive, because in all honesty, Shuji Tsushima was no more and Osamu Dazai didn't really look or behave alive. But he wasn't dead, so ...

His parents' knees buckled and they ended up sitting on the flood, crying.

"His name now is Osamu Dazai. He's an employee at the agency I hired to search for him." Itsuki didn't know what to say anymore. But he knew, he had to tell their parents they couldn't come yet. It was clear, he -Dazai - wasn't ready for that.

"Where exactly are you?" His mother asked.

"you can't come over yet. He's not ... ready for that."

"not ready for that?" His father now asked. To them it seemed impossible, that he wasn't ready. They were his parents, how could he not want to see them?