There is more than one of him

Chapter 22

After picking up Dazai from outside, Chuuya, Dazai and the rest of the Tsushima family went to Tane and Gen'emons home.

At first he brought Dazai up to some bedroom.

"Do you trust me enough to handle this?" He asked. Dazai looked at him, with those hollow empty eyes and gave a halfway nod, which was enough for Chuuya to understand.

And so Chuuya sat everyone down and let himself into their kitchen. At first considering to down a bottle of wine, but deciding against it, as no one could know how this was gonna go now, so he hit his head on the wall, took a deep breath and returned to the living room.

"So, I take it none of you are gonna start this conversation on your own, so I'm just gonna tell you what I know.

Look, I don't know anything about the relationship between all of you, but I know this. If Dazai didn't want anything to do with you at all, you would have never met him again. He wanted to see you, he wanted to know how all of you are doing.

However, as you can see, he can't stay here. You don't know him anymore. You are aware of that much at least, but you've misinterpretated it. You see him as a tortured broken soul, that needs to be helped, taken care of and treated carefully. You see him as nothing but a victim, an innocent soul who has suffered for years and is now slowly breaking down.

That's not it though. That pain is years old, the stage you think he is in right now, is long over. That point in his life when he needed what you want to give him right now, that was eight years ago, even before him and I met for the first time. Back then he was an innocent soul that needed careful treatment. He can't take that, now he has completely forgotten what being a human means.

But you can't change that anymore. I know, because I've tried. I tried to get some genuin emotion out of him, but there are none. The only one who ever managed something remotely similar was odasaku, but even with him rarely and the people from his new job are just the same, they try but they can't do it. He still has attachements, he can still trusts, desires and intentions, but he just doesn't really feel a lot while fullfilling them. He just knows who he wants alive and that's it.

That's why he doesn't remember to eat, why he drinks so much and why he is generally who and how he is. Because he really doesn't feel those sensations anymore or he just doesn't feel like eating is really that important, he got used to feeling hungry so now he doesn't realize hunger like that is not truly good.

He doesn't understand moral differences anymore, because he has lived so long being forced to not live up to them, that he has gotten used to it.

It doesn't make him a monster, it doesn't mean he doesn't care about you, it doesn't mean he is a danger to you. It just means that you need to get to know him again. Yes he needs to be taken care of a bit, but he doesn't need to be fixed, that what is broken in him, can't be fixed anymore.

All you can do now, is help him change his coping mechanisms and maybe make him understand that despite everything that has happened, he still deserves to be a living being thatcan live like most living beings do.

That is all he needs."

For a while the room was silent. Seemingly deep in thoughts about the said words, all family members sat there in silence. Surprisingly the first to speak up again was Tane.

"Tell me, how well do you know him? How accurate is what you've just told us? Because I know how the mind works, I understand where all of these reactions come from and what the causes can be and though or rather because I really don't like them, you need to tell me how sure you are, that that is how it is?"

"He was my partner for almost four years, we've been trough a lot of together, which you wouldn't even be able to imagine. Every word I have told you is true. From beginning to end. Dazai is not broken and hurt, he is glued back together and scarred. And whatever causes you think these reactions come from, I assure you they are true. Anything you wouldn't want to imagine, no matter how brutal, has happened."

"So what do you want us to do now" Itsuki asked "You've seen his body, that is not healthy. He needs help. He is a walking sceleton with way too little sleep and way too much alcohol in his system"

"You're right, he needs help with that, but you can't treat him like he's broken, you can't treat him like sprained glass, carefully, softly and with way too much understanding. He can't deal with that, he hasn't been treated that kindly in way too long. His mind can't understand what it is and will see it as danger or lead to some kind of overstimulation."

"Say, you didn't study psychology did you?" Tane suddenly asked Chuuya

"No, I didn't" Chuuya responded, looking confused at the sudden question.

"But then how do you know so many details about Osamu's psychological condition? It just seems weird for someone to know all of that without having studied it"

Chuuya sighed.

"Because a long time ago, I thought I could fix him. I thought I could help him cope with his past. Because everything I just told you not to do, are things which I tried, that went horribly wrong. I haven't studied some fancy university psychology, I have real life experience."