parasite [YANDERE!O.DAZAI/READER]

EIGHT: THE CAT.

Dazai walks towards his dorm after his brief visit to your chateau, a song trapped in his throat before it bursts into a hum. His hands are in his pockets as his footsteps crush the dirt underneath, flattening them in the shape of his footprints. The moon was high above his head–he has seen the moon many many times in his life, yet it always manages to silence him everytime it comes out. The moon, elusive and strange in her ways, casts a silvery light on the leaves of the trees planted behind the dorm which almost makes them look as though they were of an imaginary colour that only could be witnessed by straining the eyes.

He unlocks his door.

His dorm room was inexorably depressing: there was a half-ripped poster on the wall that he tore down at once, scrunching it up in his hands and tossing it in the bin; the kitchen was hollow and seemed to whisper from the wind drafting underneath in the pipes; the bathroom was sterile as a scalpel on a surgeon's tray; and his futon was still splayed out on the floor, like the alabaster innards of a cod fish. His futon and bottles of sake were proof that there was someone living in this dorm; otherwise, it looked practically unlived in.

He sighs and takes his shoes off, before setting himself on the floor and shrugging his clothes off. He takes off his bandages and finds himself new rolls to wrap himself in, to which he does so meticulously.

He wondered if you had seen him unbandaged, would you still have spared him?

Yes, you would. You would have seen his suffering as something human, something so tangibly human that it would have evoked laughter from you. But for some reason he doesn't find it in him to rebuke you for your imaginary laughter, for the noise echoed like sweet glass orchestrated by a clever finger. You would have seen his scars as something akin to an animal spinning in circles in its own cage, driven mad by psychosis from being caged up. You would be fascinated with them, the little ridges of skin, white and pink, like tiger marks, scattered across his delicate milky skin; he could imagine your clawed fingers running over them, gentle as to not cause new ones, before looking up at him with those wide (eye colour) eyes of yours.

He turns on the TV, and flips through the channels. There was no news of the man you had admitted to killing. A part of him felt guilt for betraying his fellow men for you, but you were a furious invention of his dreams. His dream-woman–it was just too unfortunate that you were a vampire, instead of human. But then again, it was because you were a vampire that he fell in...

Did he fall in love with you?

The thought makes him bolt up. Goosebumps pebble his skin at the thought. Sure, he was fond of you, but was he committed to you?

Dazai closes his eyes and tries to conjure you in the artificial night of his head. He raises a hand to push his brown hair away from his forehead, as if the light above would expose the answer he was looking for.

He couldn't possibly drive a stake through your lovely heart. The thought made him physically sick, cringing at the gruesome bone-cracking noise that crashed in his head.

A calico cat jumps outside of his window, watching him for a while before Dazai turns around. He stands up and lets the cat in, to which it gracefully leaps onto his futon. It sits down and licks a paw.

"Cold night out there, isn't it?" Dazai says, closing the window. The cat looks up at him and shows no indication that it understood. "I wonder how she's doing."

The cat curls up on his lap. The brunette runs his hand across the furry curved back. It purrs, clearly pleased with the petting.

"Maybe I'm just sick," Dazai continues to speak, aware that the cat's eyes were closed. "But when I'm with her, everything feels alright. Even when she kills people, like a good vampire, I feel so safe with her. I can't reason with myself. I can shut my eyes on the horror she causes. Every fibre of my body calls for her. My future is her."

The cat slowly opens its eyes. Looks up at Dazai as he falls back onto his futon, his legs still crossed so as to not bother the cat.

"I can hear her voice when I close my eyes," Dazai says. "I'm doomed."

The cat meows.

"You think so?" Dazai asks, taking that meow as an agreement. "I'm so drawn to her. Just like how the stars are in space, just like how the sea ebbs under the moon, by things greater than I am. I'm doomed. But I don't mind it."

The cat licks the back of his hand.

–

Dazai walks into work the next day and finds that Ranpo had been waiting for him. There was no one else in the Agency, and so he took a seat on one of the office chairs.

"You've been getting acquainted with our local vampire?" Ranpo asks casually, pulling apart a bag of chocolates. Individually wrapped in plastic, he unwraps one and pops it into his mouth. Dazai smiles.

"As perceptive as ever, Ranpo. How'd you know?"

"I overheard your conversation with Yosano," Ranpo chuckles. "You'd still love her if she was Hell? Who else could it be, I wonder?"

"Why do you bring her up?"

"Hasn't she told you? She's killed again."

"Oh right, she told me."

"Tell me about it," Ranpo says, leaning back on his chair and tossing the wrapper into the bin. Dazai sighs, before speaking.

"She seduced a man into a hotel before depleting him of blood. Took his cardigan too. Though I don't think she's the type to take trophies," Dazai speculates. "I think she just did it because it was cold outside."

"Her deeds are cold." Ranpo points out. Dazai shrugs.

"Can't argue with that."

"You should get going."

"Go where?"

"The morgue, where else?" Ranpo snorts. He gestures with his head out the window. "Kunikida's waiting outside in the car."

"You vacated the entire office to have this conversation?" Dazai asks, standing up.

"Do you want the entire office to hear that you've fallen in love with their number one suspect?"

Dazai starts, as though the word 'love' was an electric shock to the heart. "I suppose not."

He steps outside and finds Kunikida impatiently tapping his foot, arms crossed over his broad chest. His face was filled with impatience, the space between his eyebrows wrinkled from how his brows were furrowed. 

"Let's go," Kunikida says roughly, and Dazai gets into the passenger seat.