twisted devotion || Yandere!DAZAI/READER

[13] The Breakfast

When he opens the door to his dorm room, you think it is a time capsule of the past left unperturbed in its own eco-brutalism of urban paraphernalia. There are barely any clothes hanging by the closets; there are tatami mats that are smooth and comfortable for your feet; there are magazines and newspaper, both modern and old, worn and new, by a pile leaning against the wall; but what made it seem as though it was decaying were that there were no signs of a person residing in this dorm apartment. Almost there were no photos apart from a default portrait of a woman given by the landowner, which was dutifully turned away to face the wall, and there were no personal trinkets other than the bolo tie in which Dazai pulls off and gently hangs it on the coat hanger.

There is a sense of isolating desolation in the room that makes the smell of the room sharper as you enter deeper and deeper into the lair, as though it was faintly inhabited by a ghost, or perhaps a ghost with bones. There was no evidence that no one ever existed in this room. You put your bags down in an empty room that was cleaner than the rest of the living room.

"And this is your room!" Dazai announces, "I had it cleaned up to ensure maximum comfort for you."

"But what about you?" You turn to see if there are any other rooms, "Where do you sleep?"

"I sleep on the living room floor in a futon, so don't worry about me," Dazai pats your shoulder, his hand sliding down to support the small of your back as you stare curiously up at him, before you hum and turn back to your new room.

"I like it," Dazai smiles at your conclusion, "I like it a lot. Let me just put my clothes in the drawers and we can relax by the tatami mats outside."

"Of course! Just call my name if you need help," He says.

You start to pull out pieces of clothings out of your bags and fold them carefully into the drawers. You feel like you've just moved into a new house as a new couple. Once you're done, you're met with Dazai pouring cold barley tea into two mugs: one for you and one for himself.

"Turn on the TV?" You ask, taking a refreshing sip of the tea.

"Unless you wanna see more blabber about the corpses, sure."

"Nah, nevermind," You say, crossing your legs and dismissing the TV remote to the side, "I've seen it upclose; who wants to see it from another angle? It's a dismembered corpse for God's sake."

"There are people who are into those crime cases," He says, "I can imagine the influx of content being made the past few days with the corpses we've been seeing."

"Speaking of which, you said that it might be a serial murder case? How do you know?"

"I've worked in the Port Mafia, when there's a conspiracy going on, we don't hesitate to weed them out one by one slowly to show them what's going to happen to them," Dazai explains, though not happily. He crosses his legs and taps his fingers on the table, "Not saying that this is a Mafioso event, but what I'm saying is, is that the timing between each murder cancels out the possibility of a copycat killer."

You nod, "That makes sense."

You take out the notebook from your back and add:

3. Corpse with no eyes and hands found, X/XX/XXXX.

You circle the word corpse. "Wasn't the first corpse also found with a severed head? Clean decapitation," You say, "And cleanly cut hands this time? You might be right. It might be one person doing all this."

"Clever girl," He praises, "I'll have to ask the pathologist to exhume the bodies to see if there are any matching correlations between the three bodies."