The Silent Script - Bungo Stray Dogs

Glass Cage

Dazai woke to the sound of birds singing.

It was gentle at first. Soft, honeyed trilling carried by a breeze, barely there, then growing louder as his senses stirred. His eyes fluttered open, meeting sunlight-too bright, too pure, pouring in from walls that weren't walls at all. Glass. Clear, endless glass.

The chamber was enormous, a fairytale spun from gossamer dreams. The other three walls stood in delicate white, decorated with tapestries of mystical woodland creatures Dazai read books about. Everywhere he turned, beauty surrounded him, framed in fragile transparency. It was almost cruel. The silk sheets enveloping him felt unnatural under his fingers, but his mind was so blessedly empty that he welcomed the feeling.

He blinked once. Twice. But the scene remained. Real.

For a moment, it almost felt like the palace was offering him something-like it wanted him to melt into this paradise, forget the weight of the world, and stay in its shimmering hold. The birds sang sweeter, their song lulling him into a quiet, strange contentment. Romantic, in a way. As though the air itself was cradling him, whispering promises of something more, something lost.

But Dazai knew better.

His fingers brushed against the glass beside him, cold and unyielding. Beautiful, but a prison nonetheless. He could feel the walls, even if they didn't feel like walls. They trapped him in this pristine, almost poetic world. A cruel joke, really. The perfect lie.

Slowly, Dazai sat up and peered out of the wall directly to his left.

Outside, the world carried on, free. Inside, Dazai stood frozen, the sole witness to a story no one remembered telling.

A fairytale with no ending. A song with no words.

But he knew there had to be more-there always was.

Dazai drew his fingers away from the glass and stepped barefoot onto the cool white marble.

. . .

Thirty million lives had been taken in the blink of an eye exactly one year ago from today.

Somewhere in the confines of the Obsidian Keep was the small garden Dazai had been staring at through a glass wall, one of many that stretched around the radius of the palace. Despite its name, nothing about the palace was obsidian- Fyodor's Keep was an edifice spun with glass, shining with brilliance and purity. It stood like a towering god above the city of Yokohama, much like its master.

Nothing of the former port city remained. The once tall skyscrapers touching the clouds had fallen. Aftermaths of a brutal disaster could be seen everywhere in the ruins of the re-building city, the disaster known as Amenogozen that had totaled the city exactly one year ago. Yokohama's pride had been stripped.

It was a mercy, the world knew, that the Prophet had saved them. Who knows how many more people they would have lost to the destruction had the Prophet not intervened? How many more parents, sisters, brothers would they have lost? How many homes would have been crushed with the families still in them?

Yes, the Prophet's divine blessing had indeed saved them from a world forsaken by the Gifted. The coin bombs, the fake hero, Fukuchi Ouchi, the war that had almost began... all at the hands of the accursed Gifted. What would have happened if Amenogozen hadn't been defeated by the Prophet's sacrifice, the world shuddered to imagine.

The Prophet's sacrifice was a selfless act that even the greatest of men would shudder to undertake. Yet, for the world, he had done it. To give up your own child is a burden no one would wish upon their worst enemies, and so when the world heard the name of the noble princess, spoken in the Prophet's grief-stricken voice, they knew her sacrifice was profound.