To my dear Chuuya...

CHAPTER 5

Chuuya took a deep breath, inhaling the smoke while still staring at Dazai. The boy was looking out of the window, one of his knees up to his chest while his other leg was lazily hanging off the edge of the window still. His eyes were glazed over with a layer of coldness as he was scanning the yard filled with people. The smoke in the room that was surrounding him made this entire scene look even more eerie.

Chuuya finished his cigarette, putting it in an ashtray that was already filled with cigarette butts and ash. Dazai looked at him, the coldness in his eyes dissipating and being replaced with his usual careless look, a smile appearing on his face. "You going outside?" he asked.

"Yeah," the redhead answered, putting his hands in his pockets. "Are you coming too?" he asked after a few seconds of silence, not even being sure why he did it. He was going out to meet with Shirase and Yuan to find out more about Dazai's past, so it would only be an inconvenience for him to accompany him, but the words came out of his mouth before he could stop them.

Dazai looked away from the redhead, turning his attention back to his cigarette, taking another puff while looking down with a not so genuine smile. "No. I'll just spend a little more time in here. It's calming," the boy said, resting his head against the fogged up window, continuing to look outside.

"Alright," Chuuya said, turning away from him and exiting the small reading area.

Oda looked up at him when he heard him, nodding as goodbye when the redhead left the room. Chuuya made his way to his room to take the hat and coat the school gave him, since it was getting pretty cold outside. He liked the way the hat looked on him. It complimented the coat pretty well, making him look like a normal person, not like a "troubled teen" in a school for future criminals.

When he walked outside, he immediately spotted Shirase and Yuan. They were waiting for him away from the other students, in a more secluded area, resting against the side of the building. When he noticed him, Shirase waved Chuuya over, showing Yuan who the boy he met in class was.

"Hey, I'm glad you actually came," the white haired boy greeted Chuuya.

"Hello, I'm Yuan," the pink haired girl introduced herself, shaking Chuuya's hand before he could even put it in front of himself.

"Chuuya," he mumbled his own name, not used to Yuan's cheerfulness. "So... Your friend told me you could tell me some things about my roommate," he said after the girl settled back next to Shirase.

"Oh, you mean Dazai, right?" Chuuya nodded at her, waiting for her to keep talking. "Well, he's pretty well known around the school. I mean, everyone in here has some problems and we're definitely not the friendliest, but he's on a whole other level. You know, when new comers arrive here, the first thing that they are told is to not do anything to annoy Dazai," the girl started talking, playing with a strand of her hair.

Chuuya took all of her words in, his curiosity rising. "I actually don't know how no one told you about him yet. People probably found out he was your roommate so they just assumed you'll find out on your own skin. But then it looked like you guys were actually friends, so people kept their distance from you. Are you guys really friends?" Yuan asked him.

Chuuya rubbed the back of his neck, unsure of how to answer that question. Truth be told, he didn't know what Dazai wanted from him. "Not really. But I don't think he minds my presence, unfortunately. He follows me everywhere and keeps annoying me," the boy explained, Yuan and Shirase just nodding at him, clearly just as confused by Dazai's actions. "Ok, so he has a reputation and everyone is afraid of him," Chuuya couldn't help but roll his eyes when he said that, "but why? "

"There are... A lot of rumors about his past. It's said that he was put in here for killing someone. We didn't believe it at first either, but Dazai quickly proved that he was dangerous. Just 3 days after he came to this school, he threatened a teacher. That seems silly, but that teacher was so scared that he left the next day. Apparently Dazai has some shit about half the teachers in here; he knows things that could put them in jail."

Chuuya stared at the girl, clearly confused about the things that Dazai could know to scare the teachers like that. Yuan seemed to notice his confusion, since she continued explaining. "He was involved with some real fucked up shit before he came here. Drugs, fights, some even say he might have been in some gang or mafia. Whatever. The point is, he knows those teachers from before, since they were involved with him."

The redhead rested against the building too, putting his hands in his coat's pockets. "Ok, so he knows shit about the teachers. So what? That's not a reason to make him that feared in here," the boy scoffed.

Shirase was the one to talk now. "A week after he came here he stabbed someone in the eye with a pencil. Nobody could prove that he was the one that did it, but a boy was in fact missing an eye and bleeding profusely while accusing Dazai, so I would say that was some pretty compelling evidence. He also got in quite a lot of fights after that, since the tougher guys in the school wanted to assert their dominance. You know, that dumb shit where they pick on someone that everyone thinks is dangerous just so they seem stronger. Three of them were sent to the hospital, two locked themselves in their rooms for two whole days and one of them went missing. People think he might have killed that last guy, but it's just a rumor though," Shirase talked fast, looking around as if he was scared that Dazai might just appear out of thin air and hear him.

Chuuya stared at the two of them, contemplating their words. He knew there was something different about Dazai, since everyone, even teachers, seemed to stay away from him and not punish him for breaking the rules. But were these things really true? Could they even be true? Dazai was just a 15- almost 16 year old. Could he really do all those things?

Chuuya's thoughts were interrupted when Yuan talked again. "But he seems to have taken a liking to you. You should use that in your favor. And, if we become friends, he might leave us alone too. You don't know how uneasy it feels to know that he's in the same building as us. He's unpredictable; you could always be his new target, and who knows what he'll do to you. So being close to you brings us some comfort," the girl smiled, wrapping one of her arms around Chuuya's arm, beginning to walk towards the entrance.

"It's getting late. We should head to our rooms. See you tomorrow, Chuuya," Shirase smiled before he waved Chuuya off. Yuan walked to the girl's part of the building, leaving the redhead all alone in the middle of the hallway.

Meanwhile, Dazai watched the three of them from the library window, already knowing what they had talked about.

To be continued...

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