Book of One-Sh!ts

[Bungo Stray Dogs] To sleep, perchance to dream.

Trigger warning. This contains very depressed vibes, suicide, lack of purpose, etc. It's a Dazai one-shot. That should be enough to tell you for those that know.

The overarching agony of loneliness consumes him. Betrayal. Pain. Sorrow. Deception. The inability to cope with his feelings. The inability to reach out and ask for help. Osamu Dazai lays down on the park bench. He stares at the sky, the moon, the stars, the light from the city's buildings glaring down. He doesn't wish to exist. He doesn't wish to cease existing. This neverending echo of a life he lives. There isn't much he wants to protect. There isn't much he doesn't want to protect. 

"I think it's time, don't you?" he asks himself. "Time to die, that is?" 

Various images briefly cross his mind. Atsushi. Akutagawa. Chuuya. Oda. Oda? Dazai lingers on the image. The bar, he remembers it well. They spent countless nights talking about useless things. He was still in the Port Mafia at the time. He cradled the man in his arms as he died, unable to save him. Dazai reached out his hand to grab the moon. He curled his fingers into a fist, tears streaming gently down one side of his face. His heart only half dedicated to feeling so crestfallen over a simple memory. 

The poison he drank just moments before ran through his veins. He placed his hands on his chest, lowered his legs, and resumed lying in a pleasant fashion. "This is my coffin," he said. "A death without pain, without suffering, simply...sleeping. It's what I've longed for, my destiny." 

Dazai closed his eyes. He allowed himself a small smile. A simple pleasure. He allowed his mind to wander from place to place revisiting things of the past. His first meeting with Chuuya. His first meeting with Akutagawa. His first meeting with Atsushi. But, the thing that bothered him the most was Oda. He couldn't stop thinking about him. For one reason or another, the faint image of the man he was so fond of in the past never left his mind. Not for longer than a minute, at least. 

"Ah, it's so cold," Dazai opened his eyes, smiling sadly as he resumed looking at the moon. The sleeves of his coat were too thin to provide any warmth on this dismal night. He would die cold, body of a corpse cold, with nothing to melt the intense vastness of his inability to break down the ice sheets of the walls he'd built for himself. 

The city was buzzing with life even in the wee hours of the morning. His body shivered as it attempted to grow warmer even though Dazai knew that was impossible. He was going to die. He was finally going to die and there was no one to stop him. No one in this park to know of it. Everyone in the Agency would likely smile and clap upon hearing that he'd finally managed to kill himself. 

"It's what you've always wanted, isn't it?" they'd say. He could see the smiles with hollow eyes. Their expression haunting each and every dream. 

No one to care. No one ever would. His walls were vast and strong. No one knew what he was thinking. Not really, not ever, not truly. 

"This poison is taking quite a bit," Dazai sighed. The feeling of fear that most humans felt upon face to face with death never came to him. He only welcomed it. He smiled at the reaper's face many times only to be wisped back to reality without another care. Why was the skeleton of destruction not upon him yet? Truly, what was the purpose of this cyclical world of fake rules and impostor people? 

Dazai's limbs felt heavier and heavier with each passing moment. The coldness of his being turned to the heat of a fire. Sweat building upon his forehead. Unable to move. Barely able to breathe. So much for a sleeping death. 

He closed his eyes and opened his ears. Buzzing, an intense buzzing, and whispers of passersbys. No one was familiar. His muscles relaxed. The strange sensation of pain would be over soon. He could dream his last dream. Breathe his last breath. In this park and be found in the morning. He might make the cover of some local newspaper. The Agency wouldn't even give him a proper funeral. Would they throw his body in the river? Wouldn't that be a sight to see? The drifting of his corpse along the waves of turmoil to decay on the bank, forgotten and lost. 

Ah, he longed to see the day. That day. His last day. 

"Dazai-san," a voice, quiet and but a simple whisper, fell on his eardrums. It must be his imagination. 

"Dazai-san," it repeated. He lacked the strength to open his eyes. He lacked the will, the motivation, the burning desire to live. He'd never had any of those things and yet he felt even more empty in this moment. Emptier than ever before. 

"Dazai-san," he heard the third time. This third and final time. He felt hands on his hands and the slight shake of his body. That was it. That was the last human interaction he would experience and he didn't even know the voice of the person saying it. He could guess, in his final moments, but he decided against it. 

Everything, even the color his eyelids, faded to black. He'd finally reached the ephemeral dream, the eternal sleep. Quick and fleeting but at the same time everlasting. Lips turned upward in a satisfied grin, his body lay, on the park bench. He would never know who found him. He would never know who buried him. He would never know if he had been buried or burned or something else. 

And, quite frankly, it didn't matter.