parasite [YANDERE!O.DAZAI/READER]

ELEVEN: THE HOSPITAL.

"Ranpo."

The man looks up from reading the back of the candy wrapper, where the nutrition label was plastered. He smiles, the stick of the lollipop resembling a cigarette as he waves at Dazai.

"Yo, Dazai!" He cheerfully says, pulling the lollipop out of his mouth. The candy gleamed a bright pink, sheening from spit. "How can I help you today?"

"Can you tell me more about the boy with the scalpel wound on his neck?" Dazai asks, smiling with closed eyes as Ranpo hums.

"His government name was Yamakawa Yuichi," The male says, putting on his glasses and opening his eyes. His viridian eyes shimmer like foliage glimmering with dewdrops under the shade of his cap, to which he leans back on his chair and lets the light enter his starving pupils. "He was last seen on the way to visit his English tutor–at least that's what his mother says."

Dazai stands up. "Where's his mother?"

"Currently institutionalised at Yokohama General Hospital," Ranpo says. "Couldn't handle the death of Yamakawa and broke down. Tried attempting suicide before her husband stopped her in the nick of time. Say, isn't that your type of woman?"

Dazai chuckles. "I'm currently occupied with someone else at the moment."

"Well, good luck on that," Ranpo says. "The hospital is a few kilometres away; best if you catch a cab."

"Will do. Thanks, Ranpo."

"No problem." He takes his glasses off and slots it behind his ears, before popping the lollipop back into his mouth.

–

The ride to the hospital isn't quiet, with the cab driver attempting to make small talk. He was clean-shaven, hair neatly trimmed, thin lips, brown eyes. He was chatting about his daughter, his beloved daughter, about how she was studying medicine in university, and how he was so proud of her. Then his smile drops slightly.

"But...I'm worried. With all the disappearances happening," He says, and Dazai nods. "I'm terrified it'll happen to my daughter."

"I'm a detective: we'll do our best to prevent any more deaths from happening," Dazai knows he's lying because he'll let you kill again. That was the power of love: It nauseated him, but it was the kind of nausea that he enjoyed. The first thing that God made, Dazai thinks, was love–because he made Adam in his own image, thereby showing that he loved himself to replicate himself. Then came the blood, and then the thirst for blood. The thirst for someone to be inexplicably yours, the blood-spilling rage that came with loss, the desire to be worshipped by someone who sees you as their God, restarting the cycle. He sighs and leans against the cool window, watching the world be reduced to a blur by the thin glass.

"You okay, young man?" The cab driver asks, and Dazai perks up, putting on a mask as he smiles.

"Oh, yes. Don't worry about me."

"Well, we're here." The cab comes to a halt and Dazai takes a glimpse out the window: Ambulances packed into a tiny parking lot, some being emptied of patients tied down to a sterile white bed; cars that belonged to the doctors working at the hospital; the hospital itself with its gleaming windows and the staff with the snake iconography on the front, alongside a red cross. He pays the cab driver and exits the car, wrinkling his nose when it drives away and leaves dark clouds of gas in its wake.

He enters the hospital. He greets the receptionist with a genial smile, though the smile felt muffled, as though he was hiding it behind bandages. It wasn't a real smile. It didn't reach his eyes.

"Hello," Dazai says. "I'm here to visit Mrs Yamakawa."

"Hello! What's your relationship with her?" The receptionist types away at the keyboard, her neatly trimmed nails clicking against the keys.

He pulls out his Armed Detective Agency ID. "Detective work."

She looks surprised for a second, before she gravely nods.

"I see. Well, she's on the fourth floor, fourth room," The receptionist says. "Don't push her too hard, Mr detective...she's in a fragile state."

"I won't." Dazai promises as he walks towards the elevator, pushing the button to go up. The elevator is empty as it ascends, before the doors open. The sterile, silent hallways greet him, seemingly hiding something underneath its quiet front. Madness creeping around the corner, annihilation of the psyche, insanity silenced by strait-jackets and cuffs. He walks to the door that had the number 4 on it, his shoes squeaking against the mopped floors.

Dazai knocks.

"Come in."

He opens the door and he's met with a short, thin woman. Her back is turned to him and she is staring at the window outside, sealed with some sort of superglue to ensure no patient jumps to their death. The superglue had set and now looked like tree sap, yellowing in age. Her hair is neatly tied with black hair bands into a bun, though there were white strands at the roots that peeked out like birch trees.

"Hello, Mrs Yamakawa. I'm Dazai Osamu, and I'm with the Armed Detective Agency. I'm here to learn more about your son before he went missing."

"Missing and then died," She bitterly corrects him, a frown etched onto her face as she turns around. Her eyes looked vague and blurry, as though Dazai was looking at her through a cheesecloth. As if her eyes was watercolour, blotted out by tissue. She points to a stack of plastic chairs at the corner of the room. "Sit down."

Dazai pulls a chair out and sits down, right in front of her. He discreetly presses the record button on the device in his coat pocket. She sighs.

"What else is there to say other than the fact he's gone?"

"Tell me about the day he went missing."

She puts a hand to her forehead. "Gosh, it was just like any other day. We never had any visitors: no family members, no friends, no...evil bad strangers that might do us harm. Yuichi was a smart boy, but he was gullible. He was naive," She says. "He believed that because no one had ever hurt us nor visited us, it would last forever."

She pauses.

"He entered middle school and I noticed that his English grades were slipping. Rotten school–they never catered to individual students. It was a dog-eat-dog school, but it was all we could afford. So, I hired an English tutor. He came to our house to teach, and was a generally nice man. A lovely man. But one day, he said he was sick and couldn't make it to our house, so he called off the lesson. I sent Yuichi with some chicken noodle soup to his home. And he went missing. Then three days later, he shows up half-drained of blood and dead."

Mrs Yamakawa then drily chuckles, though tears form on her waterline. "I feel like I've sent him to his doom by sending him out that day."

"You didn't," Dazai says reassuringly. "No one could have predicted what happened that day."

She nods, but doesn't look convinced. "Sometimes I have dreams of him...In those dreams I'm begging him to stay, asking him if he has to go. And he always does."

"I'm truly sorry for your loss," Dazai says, softly. She turns to him.

"So? What information do you have for me?"

Dazai hides his surprise at the sudden bold tone. "Well, we know that there are two killers. We suspect that the copy-cat killer murdered your son."

"You know, when they gave me the autopsy reports, they said that the depletion of blood was done medically," She says. Dazai blinks at the sudden clarity in her eyes. "Like they might do in morgues. Try looking there. You might find who did it there."