Cirque de Sentimentalité - YANDERE!DAZAI

THE HANDS BEHIND THE MADNESS

"Another missing person report?"

Atsushi looks up from the daily newspaper, the thin and inky paper rustling noisily in his gloved hands. He looks troubled at the news, frowning before turning his gaze back down onto the paper. There, printed in black and white, was the face of a smiling man with his glasses frame perched across his nose. Atsushi feels something akin to dread ball up in his stomach the longer he stares at the smile, until it becomes unbearable and he has to look away.

"Unfortunately," Kunikida says. He pauses his typing and looks up. "There's more on the bulletin."

"How many?" Atsushi asks.

"Six."

"That's horrible!" He exclaims, with the blond pushing his glasses up.

"It is. We're trying to find leads, but...with the circus coming into town, the news is overridden with its arrival over the missing person reports."

"Circus?" The white-haired male echoes.

"Cirque de Sentimentalité. It comes without warning, but this time, newspapers got images of it while they were setting up."

"Sentimen—what?"

"It's a French word," Kunikida says. "Sentimentality. They're all over the news, I'm surprised you haven't heard of them."

"How long have they been around?" Atsushi flicks to the first page and finds the front page blasting an image of the circus. It was golden and crimson, with the tiny fairy lights strewn around it gleaming and flickering as though it had imbued the paper with its magic. Atsushi has to blink twice to cement its image as still and unmoving in his head.

"No one knows," Dazai, Atsushi's colleague, pitches into the conversation. "But they do have a special talent for kalopsia."

"Kalopsia?"

"The delusion of things being more beautiful than they really are," Dazai continues. His wavy hair falls over his forehead, to which he pushes them back behind his ear. The soft, curved cartilage gleams peach against the tufts of dark hair, almost melting into a dark black in the shades of the room.

"Have you been to it?"

"Oh, no," Dazai shakes his head. "I'm not the fondest of clowns."

"That's because you are one," Kunikida says, resuming his report on the laptop. That makes Dazai gasp, slapping a hand over his mouth dramatically.

"Are you saying my ministrations are nothing more but a trick of the light, Kunikida?"

"I'm saying you're full of shit, sometimes," Kunikida responds curtly. His voice leaves on room for conversation, so Dazai turns to Atsushi and picks the newspaper out of his hands. He hums, slim fingers sifting through the inky papers before smiling up at Atsushi.

"Would you fancy a visit to the circus, Atsushi?"

"Huh?" Atsushi blinks. "To the circus?"

"Granted, it'll be hard to get tickets, but nothing your mentor can't do," Dazai winks. "I have my ways."

Atsushi falls into a silence. "But..."

"Why do you look so hesitant, Atsushi?"

"I've never been to one of these things," He admits.

"It'll be fun," Dazai says, almost insisting, balling up the newspaper into a crumpled ball and aiming it at the bin. He misses. "It'll be a new experience."

Atsushi pauses. He thinks it over, mind thrumming like strings of a violin. It was true that it would be a new experience, but anxiety ate away at him—but the circus...