𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐋𝐔𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘𝐋𝐀𝐌𝐁 | dazai osamu

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

They take you to the psychiatric ward via ambulance, the ride silent for no one was in the backseat with you. You're in linen hospital pyjamas, the stiff fabric uncomfortably shifting over your sensitive skin. You bring a hand to your neck and rub your fingers over the scarless skin.

An Agency member had saved you: the doctor. Yosano Akiko. You would have to thank her for saving your life, but a hidden part of you bursts with resentment; why had she saved your life? Why had she brought you back from the dead? Now you would have to deal with the humilation that comes from a botched suicide: you would have the mark of Cain on your brow for being the young woman who tried to kill themselves on campus grounds.

You should have been dead, canonised into a saint. Saint (last name). Make a shrine in her name. Preserved for all of history for carrying a dead, false God within her. You are lovely and lonely, however, and you end up belonging to yourself, with no saint business happening.

Maybe you aren't meant to be a saint, because you were selfish.

They lug your bed where you're strapped down to and into the psychiatric ward, where a kind lady talks to you about your suicide attempt, before filling in basic information about your identity.

"Husband?"

"No," You say. She smiles.

"A boyfriend? We allow visits," She replies, her pen hovering over the paper. You pause, swallowing the lump in your throat. Your fists clench on your lap, and you hesitantly shake your head. Your lips burn with the kiss of Dazai, as though you had been branded. You can feel your guts churning in anxiety at the thought of putting your name besides his. You are scared of what happens if you call him your boyfriend, because that would mean whatever you did was a shared responsibility now. Your mouth moves as though in slow-motion, enunciating the words with a weight shackled to it.

"No. Single."

Your parents visit you in your room, and they fling themselves onto your bed in inconsolable tears. Your Mother brings her arms around you and holds your face into her neck, while your Father looks on with tears dripping down his face.

"Oh, my dear!" Your Mother sobs, her voice ragged and rough with tears. They never seemed to stop falling, because whenever a wave trickled down, another would spring out from her tear ducts. "We're so sorry. We're so sorry."

You stiffly watch as she releases her hold around you. You don't feel anything; you were simply not there. Your mind was preoccupied with other things, and you were in no place to repent to God about your botched suicide. But you're pleasantly surprised when your Father brings an arm around your shoulder, his cologne filling your nose.

"We're sorry for forcing a religion on you," He says, as comfortingly as he can, as hard masculinity had been beaten into him as a child. But it was time to stop the generation of trauma. Of fake love. "We thought it was best for you to have someone there for you when we weren't."

"How'd you know it was because of God?" You ask tiredly. She wipes her tears with the hem of her shirt.

"The Priest told us a young man had confessed to pushing you to suicide." That makes you freeze in your tracks.

Was this young man Dazai? Has Dazai gone to your Church? To seek forgiveness? To find out what he could do now that you weren't part of the Church anymore? Despair wells in your throat and chest like slow blood

"He said the young man was utterly inconsolable," Your mother continues. Her makeup is ruined, mascara running down her cheeks in black streaks. "That he looked like a mess."

"You know him. He was the friend I told you about before," You say, dully. Your mother looks up with a sorrowful etched onto her mein. There is a hollowness in her eyes, one that only could be described as an echo. An echo of a person, the source being God in her heart. A fatalistic comet flashes through the sun strained hues of her eyes: acceptance of a non-religious daughter.