Inevitable Destruction

It's incredibly dark right now.

Dark enough that Dazai can't see farther than an arm's length away, so he keeps his hands close to his chest and fingers tucked into his shirt. His tie was loose enough that if he were to tug on it too hard it would completely unravel around his neck, falling like sand through a strainer. He didn't even try to fix it, knowing his appearance was irrelevant because of the lack of sight he harbored at the moment.

He was settled on the old pile of blankets in the corner of his home, but home was something you called a place you loved.

Dazai didn't love this place.

It was more of a cage.

In fact, he despised it, enough to the point where he didn't care if the metal walls holding it up were rusted and corroding.

The wind outside was harsher tonight, banging at the creaking joints of the shipping container with a ferocity that was not uncommon down by the ports. The outside world howled in a feral rage, begging for Dazai to come out and throw himself over the wooden railings of the pier nearby.

The sea called for him in a soothing voice that eased his inner turmoil of roaring thoughts.

Dazai stayed huddled to himself, trying to preserve his body warmth the best he could in spite of the frigid temperature and a bitterness churning in his stomach. He'd pulled his coat over his shoulders tighter, grasping at the bare heat it provided, cringing when his skin itched with grime and cold sweat.

He'd been wandering the streets for the past week after being dismissed by Mori for a long overdue vacation, though Dazai knew the stupid doctor was just plotting something devious.

What he'd dealt with was far from a vacation, it was more of an opening to allow his thoughts to wander since he wasn't distracting himself with his Executive duties.

As nice as a vacation sounded, Dazai couldn't afford more than a power bar at the local corner store with the cash he had on him. All his money was stored into the bank account Mori controlled, and if he ever got his hands on it then Dazai would drain every ounce of money like liquid gold and disappear off the face of the earth.

That's probably the reason Mori didn't allow him access to the account...

Dazai buried his face into his arms, bringing his knees up to his chest and sighing in defeat.

If he went another few days without eating then he'd probably die of starvation, but that didn't seem like too bad of a way to go.

Dying before his eighteenth birthday sounded much better than being drugged out of his mind by Mori and dissected as Elise snickered somewhere, taunting that she was the favorite. It's why he hated birthdays.

He grit his teeth, the hollowness in his gut eating away at the flesh beneath his skin, like ants crawling under the gauze he secured around his arms with broken safety pins.

Normally Dazai was much more put together, but on the occasions where Mori cut him off to let him get a taste of the real world were the times he was quite literally unable to take care of himself. The shipping container he'd found refuge in every single time was familiar enough that Dazai could walk the perimeter with his eyes closed and avoid each dip in the floor.

It was dark with the door closed most of the time anyway, so he'd only memorized the layout through experience.

...

The night was ironically peaceful, like Dazai didn't exist anywhere else beside his tiny corner in some dump by the sea. He slowly slid a hand to the small mint box hidden under his blankets, tossed into the very corner yet not truly attempted at being hidden.