parasite [YANDERE!O.DAZAI/READER]

SEVENTEEN: THE HOPE.

You wait, in the dark, like a snake in the comforts of being under a boulder. You run a hand over your arm where you can see an outline with your engorged pupils, starved of light and hungry for it, like an orphans' eyes. To be fair, you're an orphan, and you're broken from your mother's death–her death haunted you, like smoke from an insolent cigar. How her laughter sounded more like screams, and perhaps they were–the chroniclers got it all wrong. Maybe all this time, underneath all that laughing she was screaming the entire time. You can picture your own stitch marks, the needle tracks, where the Frankenstein doctors were at work. The fault lines where you cracked apart. Sensitive lines, they were; and perhaps humans would prefer to call it scarring rather than fault lines.

The light flicks on.

It reveals that you are in Dazai's dorm, waiting with your elbow resting on his stumpy-legged table. He hums at your presence, knowing all this time you had been in his abode.

"I see you've come back from that grave of a home," You say, your voice thick and heady from the darkness clogging it. It takes a while for it to clear, and when it does, the melodious, seductive fiery dance of your voice comes back. Dazai smiles. "I tried to make it as hospitable as possible."

"I could tell," He says. "You had the fire going."

"Mhm."

"Why did you choose to retreat?" Dazai asks, sitting down in front of you. His eyes are a place of promise for you to look into, a place where you could wait and be saved from your treacherous vampirism. He could save you, he could. But you won't let him, because you've never been saved in your entire life and saving you would mean that you were broken in the first place, something you refused to acknowledge.

"I had a premonition you would be bringing some unsavoury visitors," You say, crossing your arms over the table. "And I wasn't prepared for it."

"Unsavoury?"

You look at him with fever rising in your gaze. Oh, Dazai thinks, to be kissed by you and have you share that fire with him, growing in you and lighting you up from within. "Other than Atsushi, I do not trust anyone who you choose to affiliate with."

"And why is that?"

"People like you tend to figure me out very easily," You say. "Atsushi...he's innocent. He's naive. I suppose that's what I like about him: He's too trusting."

"Atsushi is a very special case," Dazai plays with a hangnail. "He's been abused during his youth to believe he has no place to live on this Earth."

"How cruel. And how peculiar," You say. "Should he believe that."

"That's what abuse does to you. It breaks you down until you're driven insane by your own crop circles," Dazai says. You nod aimlessly, leaning a cheek on your knuckles.

"Atsushi must be frightened all the time, then."

"He is wary, yes," Dazai chuckles at the memory of his apprentice. Skittish and frightened, but determined and fearsome when called for. "I met Sakata Steven today."

Your eyebrows furrow. "Who?"

"Your copy-cat killer," He says. He looks up from his hangnail.

"Oh. How did that go?"

"His ancestors were one of the villagers who pulled out your mother's fangs," He says, and that makes your stomach churn. Dazai must have felt this, because he interlocks his fingers with your hand that was resting on the table. "He showed it to us."

"I want it back."

"My colleague figured you'd say that," The brunette says. "What are you willing to give in return?"