panic at the coffee shop

Dazai was hating himself just about now.

Look, dear reader, he wasn't being all too dramatic. He actually had a reason.

That reason happened to be his hair.

Let's start from the beginning.

—

Our odd protagonist Osamu Dazai was a sleep-deprived literature major.

What do sleep-deprived lit majors do?

They get coffee. Inhuman amounts of coffee.

Now, when Dazai was a young child, he realized that the tips of his hair changed color with his emotions.

Red for anger, blue for sadness, all of that.

The most annoying part of what he called a "curse"—but that may be taking it too far, dear reader— was that when he was flustered, the entirety of his hair turned neon pink.

"Bright, Barbie-doll fuchsia" is what he described it as.

—

Now, Dazai thought that he could just get a coffee with his pre-med major friend Yosano, maybe chat a bit, and then they could go their separate ways.

Unfortunately for him, that was not the case.

Let's be honest, darling reader, Dazai was a bit of a playboy. It would be funny if such a playboy had a crush, no?

To Dazai, the answer was a very firm no. That's because he did, in fact, have a crush.

"A very minor one!", he assured his friends, "Not a problem at all!"

It was a problem.

The crush in question was fellow 21-year-old Chūya Nakahara, an engineering major.

Yosano, being the devious girlboss she is, knew this, and decided to schedule her meet-up with Dazai at the Arahabaki Café, where Chūya worked as a barista.

Dazai was not aware of this, so he strolled out of his dorm as though it was a normal day, wire-rim glasses perched on his nose and winged eyeliner behind them.

He adjusted the cuffs of his button-up, straightened his tie, and fidgeted with the lapels of his long, black coat as he walked.

Closing his eyes and sighing, he slowly pushed open the door to the café, seeing Yosano sipping tea at a table across the room.

Dazai briskly walked over and sat down at the seat across from her.

"Morning, Dazai.", she said, sounding as if she stayed up at three in the morning to read fanfiction—as one does, dear reader. As one does.

"...Morning."

Yosano looked up from her phone, open to yet another AO3 tab. "You didn't cram that Huck Finn essay, did you?"

Dazai groaned. "I had tooo; it's due todayy."

Yosano stared Dazai in the eyes. "And you had how long to complete it?"

Dazai groaned again and set his face down on the table. "One week."

Yosano nodded. "And you couldn't have done this—"

This pause, dear reader, was promoted by Kōyō strolling into the shop, followed suit by her younger brother Chūya. Yosano had choked on her tea upon seeing the woman enter, her lesbian brain incapable of doing much else.

Dazai blinked at her questioningly, then slowly turned around to see what had made his friend short-circuit.

He blanched as his hair turned pink.