Bungo Stray Dogs: Dazai's Entrance Exam.

Prologue

What are "ideals"?

There are countless answers to this question. Ideals are stories, or they are ideologies, or they are the source of all meaning.

But if you were to ask me, the answer is quite clear.

"Ideals" is a single word written on the cover of my notebook.

My notebook has many uses. It leads me like a guiding light, a master, and a prophet. And incidentally, it is also the key for unlocking my weapons.

Ideals.

I write down everything in this notebook of mine. I always carry it with me, for this notebook contains my entire future.

It has every plan from tonight's dinner menu to where I should move to five years from now, from tomorrow's list of work duties to the locations of record low radish prices. Schedules, plans, and goals all guide me. I write them all down in my notebook and always carry it with me to utilize it.

If I may exaggerate a bit- This notebook with "ideals" written on it is the written prophecy of my own future.

My ideals are always held in there.

I think it wise to follow them and nothing else.

I follow the plans in my notebook to such an extent that my future is entirely under my own control.

To control the future- what a beautiful, brilliant phrase.

However- no matter the brilliance of ideals, if the road which connects them to reality is long and dark, then the brilliance is nothing but a fantastic illusion, the ideals nothing but garbled words.

And so I have written in the first page of my notebook the simplest rule for following my ideals.

"Do as one should."

My name is Doppo Kunikida.

The man who follows the demands of reality is an idealist, and the man who follows ideals is the realist.

This is a story of myself, a man who begged for the actualization of my ideals, and a certain new employee, born under the star of chaos and messing up said ideals, and our fierce fighting with one another.

The tenth.

I turn to this fresh page in my notebook to recount the past two or three days.

The following are such events which have transpired during that time concerning myself which I deem of particular importance.

Called on Takekoshi. Took an evening walk with him.

Received a message from the hacker Taguchi concerning the matter of the foreign warships.

Ate a pear. It was not sweet.

I should not worry about trifling matters.

I must not become warped and prejudiced- ah, and I still wish for nothing beyond this.

"Wait!" I shouted to the criminal I dashed after into the heart of Yokohama.

The shopping district's streets roared with the usual traffic. You could hear the sounds of food stall vendors calling out to customers, the hubbub of the crowds walking down the avenues, the cries of customers begging for discounts, and the rush of cars racing in every direction. An argument on the right side of the street would be all but unnoticed on the left side of the street.

I brushed past the pedestrian traffic and chased after the criminal.

The criminal was a petty thief who had caused a commotion in a jewelry store when he seized a few articles and fled. The items were all small, but three such incidents had already occurred by this time, and as such the shopping district entrusted the matter of apprehending the criminal to us.