Dazai x OC ~ Sayonara (Bungou Stray Dogs)

Chapter 19

Despite the half-light that reigned in the apartment, whose heavy silence was only disturbed by the few cars passing in the street below, Dazai could easily see the form lying on the bed finally open its eyes.

After almost three days spent unconscious, Nora had finally regained consciousness. Still dressed in her hospital gown, hidden by the thick blankets that lay over her body, she frowned before finally opening her eyelids, revealing dull-colored irises that stared at the ceiling for a long, motionless moment.

It was as if they were trying to figure out what world they were in now.

When a familiar voice reached her ears, the blonde knew immediately where she was. She was still down here, with her pain and sorrow.

"... do you realize what you've done?"

Nora slowly turned her face in the direction of the voice, and was not surprised to come across the taut figure of Dazai, at her bedside, her precious scalpel in one hand. However, she found no answer to the question she had just been asked.

She simply stared at him blankly.

"Not to mention the fact that you've damaged the Mafia's reputation, not that I care very much about that anyway, but you nearly croaked. What exactly was going through your head?"

He spoke in a strangely calm voice, but Nora knew perfectly well that he was furious. The rage burning in his only visible eye was a good clue. And, on top of that, she knew him well enough to know what he was thinking right now.

For, when he himself was trying to end his life, she was in the same frame of mind. She wanted to scream at him that he did not have to do it, because some people cared about him as much as anyone else, and that she would be destroyed if he really went through with it.

But, at the same time, she knew that, when the sweet melody of death began to play louder and louder, it had the ability to drown out even the voices of those you love more than anything else in the world.

That is what had happened to her when she had left that alley and wandered aimlessly around the city. When she had entered that bar, when she had swallowed alcohol until the good memories blended perfectly with the bad.

Until she had forgotten everything. She had accepted her fate, even welcomed it as deliverance.

But as she awoke in this bed, which she recognized after intense reflection, still disoriented, she knew that everything was back to square one. She was going to have to get on with her life again, return to a world where she could lose what was dear to her at any moment.

She would have to start living again. To drown her sorrows in work and alcohol, albeit in smaller doses, to wait with terror and a certain unhealthy impatience, almost bordering on masochism, for the next time everything went up in smoke.

Did she really deserve to stay alive, after all she had done? It was not for nothing that she loathed caring for the living, and was content to understand the reason behind the deaths she dissected.

How could anyone who did not know the value of a life claim to save those of others?

Seeing that his words and admonitions had no effect whatsoever on the blonde, who continued to stare at him with her empty eyes without really seeing him, in this room lit only by the dim light of the sconce in the corridor behind him, Dazai tilted his head back, bit his lips, and his hand gently tightened its grip on the perfectly sharp blade he held.

When he rested his eyes on Nora, she was now sitting on her bed, her arms resting on her knees and her back arched, her gaze lost in contemplation of her rumpled sheets.