Where Loyalty Lies // Mori Ougai x Reader

Chapter 9: Wherever You Go

It was the next day and Mori's head felt clearer. He knew what he needed to do now about Y/n. He decided to text her in the morning about meeting him in his office, but by the late afternoon, Y/n hadn't yet returned to headquarters. He had requested Chuuya, specifically, to go out and search for her and report back to him. Mori tried to maintain his composure about her disappearance, but to say he was fine would have been an overstatement.

As members of the mafia scoured the streets of Yokohama under Chuuya's command, they came across the blood-stained alleyway where the three thugs had been lying dead. However, Y/n was not there. Chuuya called Mori.

"Something seems to have gone down here, boss. Three bodies and a melon-sized blood stain on a wall, but none of these guys appear to have any head injuries, just sliced necks, so it's unclear where the stain came from."

Mori gripped his phone tighter. So Y/n just happens to be missing at the same time a deadly fight occurred not that far from our headquarters? He thought, scrunching his forehead. "Are there burn marks anywhere?" Mori asked.

Chuuya crouched down and examined the thugs' bodies and looked at their necks again. "None, boss. And honestly, it doesn't even look like they put up much of a struggle either. Even if Y/n was with these guys at one point, this doesn't seem like her M.O. This must've been someone else. Do you think this person took her?"

Mori considered that possibility, but something about this didn't sit right with him. Y/n is strong, so why didn't she fight back? Was she the one who actually planned this whole thing? A trick to fool me? He didn't like the idea, but Y/n was once Dazai's confidant after all, so maybe he taught her a thing or two about deceiving her enemies. Mori blinked, pulling himself out of his train of thought. Wait, enemy? He thought. Is that really the case? Is that really all we are now? Mori sighed before proceeding to reply.

"For now, just clean up the bodies and return to headquarters, Chuuya." He hung up the phone and sat down, clutching his hands together. A knock was heard at his door.

"Come in," Mori said, his body reacting slightly with an instinctual eagerness. However, he quickly regained his neutral demeanor when he realized that the person at the door was not Y/n this time. He knew she wouldn't be the one at the door, yet assuming it was her seemed to be habitual now.

A guard entered the room. "Here, boss," he said, handing Mori a flash drive. "I've compiled all of the footage of Y/n's whereabouts from the last forty-eight hours, just as you've instructed."

As soon as Mori woke up that morning without a word from Y/n, he had asked one of the guards to bring him any available information they had on where she might have gone, and given that Chuuya happened to turn up empty-handed as well, this footage was all he could go on for now. Mori plugged the drive into a laptop and watched Y/n's movements, right from the moment she left headquarters. He saw as she walked to the boutique with Gin and how she bought some small trinket, but he also saw her leave without warning her colleague, which briefly made him suspect that she actually did have ill intentions. However, once he saw her making her way to that abysmal alleyway, Mori's throat got tighter with anticipation.

He proceeded to watch the fight between Y/n and the thugs. He tapped his finger on the edge of the laptop. Mori's eyes were stern and he contemplated why Y/n wasn't fighting back. Foolish girl. It reminded him of another individual he knew, which managed to put a sour taste in his mouth. Mori was irritated at the fact that he had been spending so much time with her and yet she still seemed to resemble Dazai in her worst moments. Mori wanted to be the one that Y/n looked up to, but the fact that she was still so careless about her own life showed how Dazai still had his fangs wedged in deep to her.