l'appel du vide » [soukoku]

the war in him

"I got to chase him around with shotgun. It was probably the highlight of my career."
- T. Holland

The evening was beautiful - clear skies, almost full moon and the sounds of a lively city. Dazai strolled the streets and quiet alleyways with no direction on his mind - he just enjoyed the cool night air after a busy day.

Well busy for the others. But Kunikida wouldn't stop yelling at him for being lazy so the brunette ended up doing paperwork in the end. He stretched and cracked his back, knuckles and stiff wrists.
It was a miracle he was able to use his hands. It was a miracle he reached that age. It was a miracle how good things were going recently. However he still dreamed of his perfect double suicide.

Dazai himself wasn't sure when did that dream form or why. Usually he just agree on whatever assumption the person across had, just like he did when it came to the Armed Detective Agency. He never spoke of Oda's death, he couldn't. It was the only sacret mechanism that moved him, one of the very few deaths he regretted. And the only thing in him that was holy.

On that day something in him died a little - who would suspect it, when this was the day he set his mind on being a 'honest man'. But that little, partial death - despite being the very irreversible void he longed for - wasn't the thing he wanted.

Dazai wanted comfortable death, something short and fast, cozy with foreign familiarity, and quiet. Probably a little warm, or perhaps - numbingly cold. An abyss where he would not think, he would not feel.

This wasn't his case. It was like some part was ripped from him. A bullet hole that didn't bleed or at least not enough and it stubbornly refused to close regardless of what he did. It was something violent. And there were no sharp edges for the others to scratch and bruise on, just threads, some holes and the unsettling feeling of coming undone.
It was a little bit like losing a limb - he knew it for some time, Dazai himself could not use his arms, they only burned or itched to remind him of their existence before going numb again - useless meat, and bones, and unfulfilled desires. The only diference was that in the empty space Oda left there were no desires, nothing burned in there - just the cold ashes of a dead friend's pyre he lit himself.

It stubbornly, cruely reminded him he was alive, and life was a pain, and his hands were dirty, and he wasn't strong enought to protect anyone-

How could he protect anyone? Was it his unabillity or his unwillingness? Was he incompetent or just unsuspecting egoist?

Dazai was a fast thinker, he took rash decisions and his hands never hesitated no matter with how many lives he was gambling at the moment. Yet that certain uncertainty shook his core - a war of his own he had to wage simultaniously with the ones they faced daily.

How could Kunikida and Rampo trust him? Why was Atsushi so willing to lay his life, bared and vulnerable, in his arms? These broken arms couldn't grasp hearts, or feelings, or hopes, or reality with their scarred skin and dirty bandages.

He couldn't.

Dazai Osamu wasn't the one to fall in such pitiful moods yet he did. It wasn't them that made him such a suicidal maniac, in fact the complete opposite. Dazai imagined himself dying with a smile, something content, and big, and warm to fill his heart. Holding a woman's hand, this was the only path he didn't dare to walk alone.

So when his thoughts and memories would taste bitter he wouldn't even attempt a suicide. Which only frustrated him - it was a beautiful Friday night. Woman's chuckles, laughs, voices or scents could be found in the gentle breeze and the full moon illuminated watery eyes and perfectly composed buns with eerie light.

A beautiful night for a suicide. For finding a woman. And unpleasant one for a fight, for the brunette waged war with the ink drops swirling and painting his heart. And there was nothing to do with it all, he didn't know where to put it exactly. He couldn't win.

His feet walked the distance to his favorite bakery, around Port Mafia's headquaters, back to the agency and to the art district - all places that held pieces of him, yet meant nothing more but familiar paths for a man lost in thought.

His feet didn't belong to himself. They were Yokohama's - the feet of a man who enforced twisted laws. They knew a different map of the city - one not sold to tourists. They could map the secret paths to gang's quarters, lead you to the good men in the city, to abandoned, blood-stained metro stations or the Firefighting Department's of his childhood neighborhood favorite coffee shop.

Faintly Dazai remembered his bestfriend before Oda - the one who tied them together. The little rat visited the firefighter's grave every week - more than his family or department, he knew it - and on the way there he stole flowers from Odasaku's garden. Until, finally, the man came out of his house, cathing him by the colar.
" Lead the way." - He said, his smile somewhat annoyed. - "Let's see if that girl is worth ruining my garden."

The only problems with that were the facts there was no girl, but a grave. Dazai knew back then that he liked men already but he knew too, that men are dangerous creatures,a realization that brough the boy to tears.

He wasn't that war-torn boy he was later, that suicadal man he became - why would he waste the gift of life someone else gave him? Someone he liked so much? Maybe he had some sort of a childish crush on that dead firefighter who for short amount of time was somewhat of a friend to him, or a parental figure.

But to exist in a world without him and to know, and he knew, that even a good heart in a male's body was just a gun with the safety on could just bring him to tears. Girls were easily ruined and Dazai was tired of doing so, but maybe that was also the reason he always pursued women for his double suicide.

They were strong enough to give even him strenght. Where he learned it, how he came to think of that he wasn't sure. Maybe Kaito - the firefighter - said something along the lines, some day. Dazai now barely remembered him. Or where his grave was - how could he when he stopped visiting once deemed unworthy.

But he remebered, so many years later, that his eyes shone like Oda's. A good man's eyes full of hope or some softness even when both were hard rock you could lean against. His feet led him to a bar. The "open" sign blinking in green and red reminding him of eyes that were to never open again.

" There is no girl." - He remembered answering back then, out of the blue as his whiskey glass clincked with ice. - " Why would I want to hurt something so fragile, and soft, and pretty like a girl."