the silence of despair. ONE PIECE

OPENING ACT - the storyteller and cursed one

"Does she even believe she deserves freedom? Or has she worn her chains for so long that she's convinced they're a part of her?"

"Do you miss me as much as I do?" Dazai whispered, her voice barely carried by the scorching wind. Her crimson eyes, dull with exhaustion, gazed up at the sky burning in hues of blue and gold. The sand beneath her was hot and coarse, clinging to the sweat and blood smeared across her skin. It was suffocating, grounding her in a reality she wished would dissolve into nothing.

Beside her, lay a ghost she could never reach. Odasaku.

He lay on the sand, just as he had that night, his form weightless against the shifting grains. A mirage, a memory—too cruel to be real, too vivid to be fake. He let out a quiet chuckle, soft and familiar, the sound curling around her like an old lullaby. His lips curved into that same gentle, heartbreaking smile, his eyes tracing the vast sky above them.

For a moment, it felt like the past had never left. Like she had never truly left him behind. But the blood on her hands was warm, and his was long since cold.

"More than you could imagine," Odasaku murmured, his voice trembling with something raw—longing, sorrow, a grief too deep to name.

Dazai's breath hitched. The wind howled softly through the dunes, carrying the scent of blood, sweat, and something achingly familiar—like cigarettes and old paperbacks, like home long lost.

She turned her head ever so slightly, just enough to see him lying beside her, his presence a cruel ghost of a past she could never reclaim. His golden eyes, warm yet heavy with sadness, never left the sky, his red-orange hair dancing in the wind.

Dazai swallowed hard, her fingers curling weakly against the burning sand.

"Then why do you feel so far away?" she whispered.

Odasaku smiled—soft, sorrowful, the kind of smile that felt like a goodbye long overstayed.

"I'm dead, Dazai. Long gone, my dear," he whispered, his voice barely carried by the desert wind.

Dazai's breath shuddered. The weight in her chest pressed heavier, deeper, like an ache carved into her very bones. She knew—God, she knew. And yet, hearing it from his lips felt like a fresh wound tearing open, bleeding out all the things she never got to say.

Her fingers twitched against the sand, reaching for something—someone—she could never hold again.

"Is death quieter than this, Odasaku?"

Odasaku's gaze softened, his ghostly form bathed in the dying light of Alabasta's sun.

"Much quieter," he murmured, his voice carrying the weight of something distant, something lost. "Just... silence."

Dazai let out a breath—shaky, uneven. The heat, the weight of her wounds, the echoes of war—they all felt deafening.

She turned her head slightly, crimson eyes searching for something in his face. "Then maybe... just maybe, I'd like it there."

Odasaku's smile was sad, knowing. "Not yet, Dazai."

"Why?" Dazai whispered, her voice raw, trembling with an emotion she couldn't hide.

Odasaku's smile, small but filled with something tender, held a knowing sadness. "Because he needs you. You've found him, haven't you? The boy of this tale."

Dazai scoffed, the sound jagged with pain, like it had been torn from deep within her. "He hates me." Her words cracked, each one laced with self-loathing. "He knows what I am. I'm too broken, too damaged for him." Her gaze dropped to her hands, the blood still staining her skin, the reminder of everything she had ruined.