«The Language Of Flowers» (Bungou Stray Dogs)

The Literature Of Possibility Part III «Oda Sakunosuke»

Fire. Smoke. It soared through the sky as black as night.

I didn't bother to switch the engine off before Dazai and I flew out of the door of the vehicle. I knew this place by heart, the very place Oda had Dazai set up as a secret refuge for a few orphans he took in.

The first time I went here was when Oda introduced me to the kids. It was here that I had first learned the concept of family.

Having been raised within the shadows of neglect, I grew up hating the whole world with every fiber of my being. Each kill I did was merely a way to pass boredom in this dark life of mine. Mori saw potential in me but like Dazai was to Akutagawa, he saw me as a sword without a sheath.

Reckless and uncaring of my work, Mori then decided to assign me to be Oda's partner.

I've lost a lot of partners due to my rash impulses so having Oda join me then didn't really matter much. If he was a nuisance, I'd just kill him and if he could keep up, well... I never really bothered to care. He was only meant to be a blank slate to me, a random face in the sea of people and yet it was thanks to him that I had probably, as he once put it, changed.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was after our mission when he asked me to stop by a store with him. We weren't usually in talking terms and that day might have been the first time he had ever talked to me without scolding me for being reckless again.

That was when he introduced me to the kids. A ragtag of orphans he took in and was supporting while he worked as a mafia operative.

'First, Mori assigns me a partner who doesn't kill and then I find out he also babysits? Are you even a mafioso,' I remember clearly when I told him that, his eyes widening in surprise that I even addressed him before he laughed.

A genuine laugh that embarrassed me to no end.

'Probably. But it's not like I'm staying for long here anyways,' He admitted then and it was when he told me his dreams. I found it sappy back then. I mean what kind of Mafia wants to be a writer?

It was a preposterous dream and yet as the days wore on and I was promoted to an executive, Oda's dreams remained in my mind and it had affected my view of the world. Once a mafia always a mafia, I lived with that dogma ever since I joined the very community my father helped in building with dirtied blood-stained hands.

The blood of a true blue mafia ran through my veins and yet Oda made me question if it was possible to escape that fate. Could I really abandon the one thing I grew up knowing and strive for something better and different?

'Creating a novel is, in the end, creating a world where there is an alternative nature. People there are not portrayed as the accumulation of their experiences, but rather as possessors of the potential to leap away from those experiences.'

It was, at that moment, that Oda had made me realize that humans were capable of cutting away from the status quo set upon them. That even I too could leap away from my past and create myself a new path. My life is like a novel, and as Oda had said, I had the potential to change and strive for a different life-

A future where I was not bounded by my past.

I could break away and yet-

As I watched his profile from across the street of onlookers, I suddenly questioned myself where the Oda who had told me this had gone.

His eyes were devoid of a future now. The man who dreamed to be a writer was gone- replaced with a man who has long since given up with life. I could see him dressed for the occasion as well, my heart clenching at the sight.