parasite [YANDERE!O.DAZAI/READER]

TEN: THE LETTER.

"Sometimes I get the feeling I'm being followed," You casually say, examining your sharp nails as Dazai enters the alleyway you were waiting in. "You're late."

"Sorry~" He steps over a large puddle. "Kunikida was wondering where I was going off to and I had to erase my footsteps. What did you say about feeling followed?"

"I'm not sure. I always feel like there's an eye on me at all times," You warily look around, before sighing. The semi-darkness of dusk begins to creep alongside the horizon. Water drops from the air-con units above. "There is, probably."

"What makes you say that?" Dazai quirks a brow, and you kick yourself off the wall to get closer to him. Your footsteps are silent, smooth and lethal, predatory in nature. There is a look of tiredness in your eyes that Dazai hadn't seen before. And it made him feel as though you were simply an invention of darkness, an invention of a crude magic trick whose magician had left for better pastures and left his trick hanging, half-conjured and half-abandoned.

"I just feel it."

"No evident proof?"

"Nope. Just a feeling," You raise a sleeve and reveal to Dazai a patch of skin pebbled with goosebumps. "See?"

He puts a hand on your skin, the pebbled skin, and shivers when he feels just how cold your skin was; it felt like he was touching glacial ice, packed blue ice.

"Your skin is so cold."

"I'm cold-blooded," You pause. "I guess in every way I'm cold-blooded."

"You're not a reptile," Dazai chuckles. You smile, dimples furrowing into your face.

"I suppose not," You say. "So? Did you see my craft?"

The brunette tilts his head. "Craft? You mean your victim?"

"Yes."

"I did. You exsanguinated him. Though..."

"Though what?"

Dazai sighs, rubbing a finger to his temple as he gropes around his head for words. "Things just got a bit more difficult. There seems to be another body popping up after you commit a crime, almost as if they're...well, copying you."

You blink. The wind blows through your hair, giving the illusion that it was dancing around you. "Another vampire?"

"No. Someone parading as one."

"Well, that's none of my business, really," You say. "Does a lion care about the doings of sheep? I don't care to understand sheep, only to eat them."

"Well, this sheep is wearing a lion's skin," Dazai states, watching as you look up from your nails. "You've got competition."

"Don't say that," You huff. "No human can be competition."

"Yeah? Well this one's really trying."

"Tell him, if you find him, to keep trying," You say, sinking down into the shadows slowly, your knees entrenched as though you were melting into the opaque blackness. Your eyes are closed, blocking Dazai from reading you.

"Oh I doubt it. In fact, you might be the one to find him," He says.

"We'll see."

And with that, you're gone. Dazai stares at the space where you had just been standing, and he closes his eyes and sighs again. He leans against the brick wall, the methodical tapping of water hitting the puddle like a comforting metronome. Incipient madness, he thinks, trying to copy the actions of that of a vampire. But the thought disturbed him: Someone else knew about your existence. And if they knew, they weren't concerned, but more so obsessed with copying your diabolical deeds.