twisted devotion || Yandere!DAZAI/READER

[10] The Hand

Painting reference: Maiden's dream of a lake, by Max Ernst, retrieved from the YOKOHAMA Art Museum website.
XX

As promised, you arrive at the front of the Yokohama Museum of Art at exactly 3PM, sharp.

You were less than pleased when you had discovered he had paid and bought more pieces of clothing than you had anticipated, arguing with and squabbling with him on the way back to your hotel the moment you two exited the boutique; though it was a lost battle: He had paid and you were left with a grinning face of Dazai burnt into your eyelids.

Now you felt cleaner, fresher; more accommodated to take on whatever this world threw at you with these new clothes; albeit you hadn't paid for them. You had slipped out of your old costume, abandoning it like a disguise, shedding the self that made you look at yourself and say: "This is not my world." Any devastating realisations were now lost to the pile of clothes in the hotel room, and empty of you.

"You're right on time," Dazai says, slipping up behind you like a shadow. You could smell the fabric softener from this proximity, and up close from behind could you see the gentle afternoon glow encasing his gaze like a halo, with two different (first names) staring back at you from the syrupy caramels of his eyes. Long lashes fluttered flirtatiously as you blinked in flustered panic, taking a step back and laughing nervously when he tilted his head and giggled alongside you, "What's so funny?"

"Nothing, nothing," You brush him off and fan yourself with your hand, "Bit hot today for that trench coat, no?"

"I never even realised," He says, his voice rich with sap. He slips off his coat and hangs it on his arm, his rolled up sleeves exposing the bandages that covered his arms like a second skin, "Shall we go in?"

You squabble with Dazai once more about the tickets to the museum, elbowing him behind you and smiling at the lady who seemed amused by the arguments you were having, before she takes your payment when you threaten Dazai to walk out of this museum and head back to the hotel.

The museum is empty and devoid of anyone else, almost as though it had been reserved for the two of you; a world just inhabited by you and Dazai, with the quiet echoes of footsteps echoing like bells.

He navigates the museum as though he knows it by the back of his hand; sooner or later you're sitting on a bench before a myriad of paintings, staring at one of the apocalyptic scenes of a nightmare painting before you, its figures purposely distorted beyond human comprehension. The paintings crystallised all spectrums of human emotions, from happiness to grief, from joy to isolation; up until this moment you had only experienced the simple revolution against the lives that surrounded you, in a competitive dog-eat-dog world, but now you began to see the forms and colours of other lives through the scope of paint and glass, realms much deeper and stranger and remote to be discovered.

You cross your legs and shake your foot in anticipation, before blurting out,

"You know, I've been having some strange experiences," You say. Dazai perks up.

"Oh?"

"I have these moments where I feel like my chest is about to collapse," You explain, carefully, trying not to tip over the glass that you were so precariously carrying in your heart: you felt like the noise a glass made when a finger traced around the rim: sonorously empty, "I've never experienced this."

Dazai turns his head away from you, his brown curly locks concealing his side profile as he studies at the painting: <La rêve d'une jeune fille d'un lac> "Sounds like a horrible thing to go through."

"I'm sorry," You drop your gaze and look down at your lap, head spinning in shame, "I don't know why I dumped that all on you."

"It's alright, I want to know how you're feeling. I desire to know," He says, kindly. He leans back and recrosses his legs, "Perhaps you should consider recording everything down in a diary; note down when these things happen so you know how to avoid it."