Dead by my own hands

[18!Dazai POV - self harm and suicide warning.]

Nothing in this godforsaken world has meaning. That's what I've thought for all 18 years of my feeble, pathetic, worthless excuse for an existence. That's what I've thought every time I've picked up a gun. What I've thought every time I've picked up a knife. Every time I've used that same knife to kill a man and slit my own wrists. Every time I kill someone in cold blood, trying to make peace with the excuse of "it's my job". Every time I've tried to take my life. Every waking moment that I am "alive" I know that I will never have an impact no matter how hard I try. I will do things in my time, sure, but when I die it's only a matter of time before everyone and everything moves on, and I only remain in this world as soil and worms. Everything and everyone I know will be gone and forgotten in a matter of years. All it takes is one bullet, one swipe of a knife, one knot in a rope to make sure I don't have to watch everyone I "love" leave me. That's what I thought.
Until I met him.
Odasaku, the one man I ever felt I could really trust. At least, as much as I could handle. I've never really been the trusting type, but he made me feel like I was worth something. Worth something more than a weapon or a contract or a job. He made me feel like a person, rather than a tool to be used and discarded like you never even realized it was there. He taught me things I never would have known without him. He taught me how to trust, how to love, how to grow, how to live. If only he had learned those lessons himself. He was always one to put others in front of himself, always one to make sure that they were taken care of and healthy before he ever was. He loved children, too. He made sure to take care of every orphan he could find, including me. I didn't realize that I was one of his kids until it was too late. As the only one left, looking back I feel a sort of longing to have realized it when I could have. A longing to get to know them while they were alive. They had such a life ahead of them, so much time, so much to learn and experience, so much that was ripped away from them before they even realized they had it. And yet I was left here, alive. Head throbbing, wrists bleeding, but alive. I always wonder why I was the only one that could have made it, why they were all targeted and I just happened to get lucky. I live with their blood on my hands, their life on my shoulders, everything that they could have experienced left dwelling inside me like a dying sunflower searching for the sun to turn to.
He taught me I had meaning. My life and this world may not, but I do, and my life is how I choose to use that meaning. He taught me that everyone has their burdens to carry but it doesn't drag them down, it makes them stronger. He taught me the more you persevere through the pain, the tougher your skin gets and the stronger you become. He taught me not to think of others as objects like I was thought of, but to see them as how I wished I was when I was used. He taught me to live while I still could.
When he died, I blamed myself. I walked home with his blood on my hands, his words on my mind. I barely had the strength to wash the blood off. I sat on my bed, staring at my stained hands, seemingly willing the blood to wash itself off. I stared for longer than I care to remember. I watched his blood dry, his memory fade, until I could barely hear his voice echoing in the back of my mind. I remember Chuuya trying to get me to do something, but I can't remember. All I remember is him shaking me,hitting me, trying to snap me out of it before nearly giving up. I remember looking up at him as he was about to walk away, tears welling in my eyes as I try to force them down, my throat like sandpaper from holding back sobs. I think that was the first time Chuuya ever saw me as more than a suicidal maniac he was forced to be partners with. More than a competition, but a human being. A human that had lost his childhood to despair, finally regaining it with the help of a friend, and that one little bit of joy in his life being ripped away from him with no warning, and telling himself that he'd done it. He sat with me for a while, not doing anything, not talking, not even looking at each other. He just sat next to me. He made sure I wasn't alone. He made sure I wasn't sitting alone as the tears rolled down my face faster than I could try to hold them back, as my throat ached from sobs that took all my power to try to force down until I couldn't take it anymore. He just sat with me as I broke down in sobs for what felt like hours.
Once my tears had run out and my face had dried, I finally gathered the courage to wash the blood off of my hands and shower. Standing before the mirror, I tried not to look at myself, avoiding my reflection like I might go blind if I saw it. Instead, I watched the red flow off of my hands and stain the porcelain sink. I watched as the dried red flakes turned back into blood, this time finally cold. I watched as the red stains in my skin slowly came off as I scrubbed my hands with soap until his blood was replaced with mine.
Stepping into the shower, the water was cold and pricked my skin like daggers of mist. I was so numb that I barely noticed. I stood there, under the water until I could feel tears well in my eyes again. Isolated in the bathroom, I let them fall. Tears speckled the shower floor as my face remained stoic. After everything, I didn't have room for emotions. Under the solace of the water, I brandished a razor blade, taken from a pack for shaving. I felt nothing as it swiped across my skin, leaving valleys speckled with white and red. I thought of his words, the feeling of his blood as I held him as I watched the red flow from my own veins. At that moment, I felt as though nothing could repair the hole created by his loss. I felt like hurting myself was the only way out, that ending my life was the only way to get back to how I had felt when he was alive, because at least then I had felt something at all. I turned off the water after a while, but remained standing right where I had been. Soaking in the feeling of the blood coating my arms and legs, the feeling so different from that of another persons.
As I stepped out of the shower, my wounds still bleeding emotionally and physically, I stared into my eyes in the fog-stained mirror, thinking what bad can my own reflection do now. My eyes, black and vacant, stared back at me as if telling me what I had already known. That I was alone now, with nowhere to run. Blood dripped down my arms, hands grasping the edge of the sink as I leaned in closer to the mirror as if trying to plunge into it in search of a better life. I tried to wipe the fog with my arm, accidentally smearing it with blood as a replacement. Through the red welling in drips down the mirror, my reflection seemed like a corpse trying to pass for a living man.
Wearing pajamas thrown on the bathroom ground the night before, I walked out of my bathroom, small drops of blood staining my already brown-red stained bath mats. Somberly, I walked through my room and into the kitchen I shared with Chuuya. I took the largest knife I could think of at the moment in my hand, boney and red, and pocketed it. Walking back to my room, Chuuya stopped me with a hand in front of my chest.
"The fuck do you think you're doing with that?" He asked in a grouchy tone, his concern showing slightly through his anger. Though I knew he wasn't concerned for me, but for how this could affect him.
"project." I said, no emotion in my voice, my empty eyes looking just past his shoulder as I pushed past him and into my room.
I closed and locked the door, moving a desk chair under the doorknob to ensure that little dickfart of a man couldn't burst in. I walked over to my window, opening it to let the breeze wash over my face one last time. Cherishing what I thought was the only good part of the hellscape I was forced to "live" in, I took the knife, grasping it with both hands, with the edge pointed in toward me. I breathed in, filling my lungs with air until I couldn't breathe anymore, and plunged the knife into my gut before I could think about how much it would hurt. I tore it out, blood seeping through my torn shirt, flowing out of my open stomach. The breeze lightly gushed over my face as I wheezed, genuinely smiling for the first time since I had remembered. I turned to look at the stars and enjoy the sight as my breathing turned ragged and I could no longer feel my body. The glimmer of the night sky turned into a blur as my blood flowed over my body, and I collapsed, finally as I had always been meant to be.
Dead by my own hands, by my own fate.