Chapter Text
He processed his entire world in fragments. From start to finish.
Holding out the storybook like this meant its spine bent and cracked under the pressure of his hands. Leather cratered, the cover missing chunks. The title: DYNASTY ERA TALES. Chuuya ran fingers over age-worn pages. They crinkled like redried newspaper, almost as old as the legends written inside.
The last time Chuuya processed the lone mountaintop among the clouds surrounded by a lush sea of trees, summer’s scent ended with the taste of autumn. The brilliant green hues of nature turned to reds, yellows, oranges. Leaves drifted in the breeze, settling in piles on tiny hills and all around the paws of the fox statues. Chills of the wind nipped at his cheeks and kissed his skin red.
All of his recent visits dating back to early summer felt like he was making a trip to see an old friend, no longer edged with suspicion nor the bad, bad feeling that he was on the precipice of a terrible discovery. He learned most of what he wanted to know, and while Dazai’s evasive answers to his questions frustrated him, he tempered that frustration. There was no rush. They had time. The thought rang hollow in Chuuya’s silent mind. It was even quieter on the roundabout. Stone statues listened, unblinking, and did not cast judgment.
Every exhale of his came out in white puffs.
Halfway up to the top, the bubbling of a distant brook caught his attention. The same bubbling he recalled hearing in the fog all the times he walked circles around the summit. But now it was clear and the morning sun rose beyond the horizon, radiating the first light of the day. A family of birds nestling in an unseen nest above him chirped. Twigs snapped underfoot and sent a critter scurrying into a berry bush.
Chuuya heard something (someone?) humming down by that bubbling brook. When he stopped and strained to hear anything else, it sounded a lot louder, a lot closer. But a short detour away from the path he was on. He ducked under several low-hanging branches and waded through a field of overgrown grass that opened up into a clearing near the water. A meadow full of blues, reds, yellows stretched out in front of him.
By the river, the water gently flowed downward. Waves bubbled and lapped at bedrock, dragonflies hovered and darted between swaying reeds. Farther down, a doe and its fawn drank from the stream, making little splashes. The smell of recent dew tickled his nose. His mind cleared for a moment as his senses took it all in—and not just the glassy surface of the water, fragile-looking in the shimmering air.
Near the water’s edge in front of him, a figure had its back to him. Chuuya counted eight tails fanned out on the ground around Dazai, and one tail cradled in the man’s hands. Three careful steps forward and Chuuya noticed Dazai in an intense bout of concentration—his eyebrows furrowed and him seemingly lost in thought as he touched the tip of his tail, smoothing out the fur.
“Hi, Chuuya.”
Dazai’s voice made him flinch in surprise. He shouldn’t be surprised. For all he knew, Dazai had been well aware of his presence for several minutes and was just feigning ignorance.
“Hey,” Chuuya said as he approached and sat down beside Dazai.
That faint floral scent he associated with Dazai returned, warmer. The last he remembered of it, it was a cold, cold evening when they said their goodbyes and went their ways. Flowers had never smelled so full of sorrow than at that moment like the land wept for Chuuya’s next return. Leaving felt bad and his heart felt heavy, even with the knowledge that he’d definitely come back and their goodbyes were see you soons and not farewells. But Dazai was here again, where he promised to be, where he’d always be and always has been. Nothing changed except for the turn of seasons as another year came to a close between them. Soon the first snow would blanket the earth.
Fingers dipped into the water, causing its surface to ripple. Dazai’s reflection—their reflections—bent beneath the sunlight and shattered. He circled his hand and stirred their lookalikes into a melted mass of sparkling colors in the crystal clear pool.
Deer hooves stamped the ground, mother and fawn disappearing into the thick of the trees.
“So, uh…” Chuuya trailed off, his eyes drifting to the repetitive motions of Dazai’s hand. “What’re you doing? Is this how you bathe? In the water?”
A soft snort came from Dazai, his eyes crinkling in amusement as he struggled not to burst into a fit of laughter. “Do you see a shower somewhere nearby?” A couple of his tails twitched and curled around nothing on the ground. “I got a little dirty so I’m just cleaning my tails off.”
Ah. Made sense. He never really stopped to think about the unique challenges Dazai faced being confined to the mountain. Both a blessing and a curse that the touch of mankind did not reach here. The air, for instance—it was crisp and clean, felt satisfying to inhale. Pure. Farther inland, some of Japan’s busiest cities suffered from polluted skies and unclean air. In early spring he sometimes wore a mask to avoid breathing any of the nastiness in.
Even the water: light reached its shallow depths and it was like looking in a mirror. He could count every individual pebble and make out underwater bugs that dragged across the sand. Yokohama, particularly, saw its waters contaminated with plastic and trash and scraps of newspaper. The stench of ripe sewage dumping into the bay always made his stomach turn and his eyes water.
The constant combing of fingers through his tail did not seem to bother Dazai. He focused, but not too much. This was routine. And Chuuya couldn’t imagine the painstaking time needed to constantly keep them white, bright, and immaculate as they were.
“You know, a brush might help make that go by faster rather than using your fingers.”
“Oh? Are you offering to get me a brush?” Dazai asked, continuing his task.
Chuuya lifted his head to the sky and closed his eyes. The sun’s rays warmed his face. “Maybe. It probably takes you hours to clean all of those tails, huh?” He paused, thinking ahead to the next few months. The next couple of holidays. “Maybe I’ll come by for Christmas and bring a brush.”
Several moments of silence passed between them—comfortable, as all of his recent visits had been. They used to be tense and had him waiting, expecting impending doom. To be held in a crushing grip and devoured alive. Another lost soul to the ether, and the only one keeping score: Dazai. Goosebumps raised on Chuuya’s arms at the thought and he rubbed them a few times.
“You’re going to come see me for Christmas?” Dazai sounded hopeful and he hid a tiny smile.
So hopeful it made Chuuya ache a little. He skipped out on visiting the mountain almost the entirety of winter last year because although every season here was beautiful in its own way, subzero temperatures and snowfall were a brutal beauty to behold. He didn’t want to make a promise he couldn’t keep, so he carefully cherry-picked possibilities and topped them with maybe. It kept Dazai hopeful, but he also wouldn’t be met with colossal disappointment when the weeks and months went by without a trace of a human visitor. They had time. But time also kept them apart.
And this was one of those maybe situations.
From the corner of Chuuya’s eye, he noted a familiar wine scarf wrapped around Dazai’s neck. Not too tight, but Dazai looked cozy with the comfort of fabric almost up to his chin. Did he get cold? Probably not. It was probably a human illusion like the rest of him, Chuuya reasoned, but it still caused the corners of his lips to turn up into a tiny smile. He never replaced that scarf with another because there wouldn’t be another like it, and he was fine with that.
Chuuya crossed his legs and leaned back a little. “Nice scarf, by the way.”
Dazai hummed to himself and combed his wet hand through the fur at the tip of his tail. “Thanks.” He focused his attention on cleaning the specks of dirt out, running fingers several times through the fur until he was satisfied with the result. “A silly human gave it to me a little while ago.”
“Human? Really?” Chuuya shot him a look of disbelief. “I know you’re…y’know, but I have a name. Won’t kill you to say it.”
“You’re so funny, Chuuya.”
Now Dazai was looking at him and smiling wistfully. He had let go of his tail a few moments ago and rested his hands in his lap. Human hands. Blunt nails. The usual. The haori draped across his shoulders billowed in the breeze behind him. A bee buzzed past them and the beat of its wings made the ears atop his head twitch.
“I feel like time goes by slower and slower now, and it feels like your visits take longer and longer. I feel like it’s simultaneously been a year since I’ve seen you, and like it was only just yesterday that we parted ways.”
Unlike the earnest expression looking back at him, Chuuya smiled weakly. Time went by fast for him because his life was filled with work, family, friends. One day it was Monday and the start of the work week. The next, it was the weekend and he was hanging out on his balcony smoking into the early hours. Dazai crossed his mind in those twilight hours when he was all alone with lonely thoughts, and no earlier. The only time he had a breather to just…think. Think about too many and too few things all at once.
Being out here surrounded by nature day in and day out sounded like a nice vacation from his usual life, but he couldn’t stomach the idea of sitting on the cliff of the mountain and watching the sun rise and go down. Every. Single. Day. So, yes, he understood why time seemed to pass by excruciatingly slow for Dazai. There was nothing for him to do except live out the days of immortality in the company of wild animals, trees, and silent statues. Chuuya feared death, but this life didn’t seem any better.
Legend had it that a nine-tailed fox died either by decapitation or by getting stabbed through the heart. The folklore book he had back at home said so as well, but Chuuya had yet to read the rest of it.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” Chuuya scratched the back of his head and drew his legs up, hugging his knees. He cast his attention into the water again. “But things have been slowing down for me recently, so I can probably come by a little more often.”
“I hear holidays are very special to people,” Dazai mused, tapping a finger to his chin. “Like Christmas, New Year, White Day…”
Chuuya turned his head slightly and blinked. “Well, White Day is mostly romantic. So…it’s not that big of a day unless you have someone special. And most of us don’t celebrate celebrate Christmas. It’s just a fun excuse to throw parties.”
“I see.” The tails behind Dazai came to life and swished in the air.
In a flash, Dazai pulled a flower out by the stem and leaned over Chuuya, tucking it behind his ear. “I knew something was missing. I’m so used to seeing you covered in cherry blossom petals.”
…and Chuuya opened his mouth to say something but decided against it. He felt silly having a sunflower in his hair and Dazai looked like he was trying hard not to laugh again, but he let it slide just this once. Squinting, under the glow of the sun Chuuya recognized tiny brown dots that either remained on the tip of one of Dazai’s tails or somehow went overlooked. “Hey—you missed a spot or something.”
Dazai first looked over his shoulder and then draped a few tails across his lap. He combed through the fluff in search of dirt. “Where?”
“What do you mean ‘where’? Right there.” Chuuya pointed to the same tail still slightly damp from Dazai’s earlier grooming session. He reached out, pausing just as he was about to touch the tail, and glanced up. “Can I?”
He felt a little like an idiot asking for permission, but he wasn’t sure if Dazai would react negatively to touching his tails. If Dazai had any sort of animal instinct, then it stood reason to believe that like most animals, he wouldn’t appreciate having them touched. Especially by a human. While he was no god, it felt wrong for Chuuya to do anything more than sit next to Dazai, at the risk of upsetting the divine powers that may be here.
And the only time that Chuuya felt those tails on his skin was—no, never mind. He didn’t want to reflect back on that day when they were naked, bodies pressed flush against one another. It made his cheeks heat up slightly in embarrassment.
But rather than outright deny his request, a small satisfied smile broke free on Dazai’s face, infuriatingly triumphant. It met his eyes in a faint glimmer. One of the tails brushed against Chuuya’s wrist, softness tickling underside, and startled him out of his reverie.
“You should see the look on your face right now,” Dazai teased, flashing a fanged grin. He reached out to poke Chuuya’s cheek, but had it quickly swatted away. “If you’re offering to help me, then you may.”
Ignoring the eyes that followed him, Chuuya shuffled a little closer until their knees touched. He pulled his gloves off and set them down before taking the damp tail into his hands with a loose grip. Softness tickled the valleys of his palms, smooth and slippery against his skin, but he feared grabbing the tail with more force in case it hurt Dazai. Keeping it in one hand, he dipped his other hand into the cool water and swirled his fingers around a few times until they were all submerged.
“You’re weirdly informed for being a hermit on a mountain,” Chuuya said in an attempt to keep their conversation going because it meant less time for his mind to wander and focus on what he was doing. Like this, it felt intimate. Very intimate. And it made him want to squirm. Dazai tormenting him did not help that fact. “I didn’t think you knew about all the different holidays we have—except for maybe the ancient ones, I guess.”
Eyes narrowed and Dazai stretched his legs out in front of him. “I feel like that’s a backhanded way of calling me really old.” But his words held no bite. “I am the mountain’s ears. I’ve heard plenty of things over the years. I’m not ignorant to people.”
“Well—you are technically old, aren’t you?” Chuuya ran his fingertips through tail fur. “Something like, for every tail a kitsune grows means another hundred years of living.”
“When you put it that way you really do make me sound old.” Dazai didn’t seem to like the idea of being reminded of that fact, his shoulders slumping forward.
Chuuya gazed up at him briefly and offered an apologetic smile. “I’ll get old, too. We all get old, break down, and eventually die.” He lowered his gaze and continued brushing his hand along the length of Dazai’s tail. His lips moved a few times, mouthing mute words he wasn’t sure he wanted to add. This was an unkind conversation with an unkind reality and he wanted none of its reminders nor did he want his words used against him. He swallowed them back down, sour, left to rot away deep down in his chest.
Five seconds too many passed before Dazai spoke up again: “The sun sets for everyone.”
“Huh?”
A gust of air rustled the curled ends of Dazai’s hair. “It’s just a saying that time keeps moving for everyone, whether we like it or not. Time moves on, we move on.”
“So it goes,” Chuuya muttered bitterly. Just as the turbulent freefall of his thoughts went down, down, down the hole with no end in sight and slapped him across the face, he changed the subject. “What about you, huh? You must’ve seen a lot of crazy things in your lifetime. What were things like back then?”
Dazai’s eyes fluttered shut and he hummed in thought, looking both pleased and at peace without so much as a single wrinkle marring his features. “That feels pretty nice, Chuuya—you’re good at this.” A pause, his voice growing somber. “Do you really want to know what things were like that back? Whatever you’ve read in history books is what it was like, only more gruesome. So, I guess you could call it ‘crazy’.”
Pursing his lips because what else was he supposed to say to that, Dazai was technically right, Chuuya ran his fingers through the fur one last time before he let go of the tail. Assuming Dazai had lived over nine hundred years by now, he lived through many of the world’s major events. Plenty of time to witness the human race for himself and formulate an opinion based on how frequently people backstabbed one another and left wars and broken families in their wake. Did Dazai ever live alongside people? Did he have friends and a place to call home, or was he doomed to be an outcast from birth? Every vague answer brought on five, ten more questions until the dam of Chuuya’s mind broke and flooded with all these what-ifs. He digressed.
“Have you ever gone into the city?”
Thinking about the question for no more than a few seconds, Dazai shook his head. “Not recently, at least. It’s been a while.”
“Define ‘not recently’.”
Sliding his sandals and socks off, Dazai dipped his toes into the river and kicked up some of the water. “When a bridge leading inland suddenly popped up one day. That was maybe fifty years ago?”
“That’s…okay, yeah.” Chuuya shook his head and diverted his attention to the water. Every kick of Dazai’s feet disturbed their reflections, muddling colors again. He paused for a while, turning an idea over in his head. “What do you think about coming to visit me sometime?”
Another splash of water. Dazai slowly shifted his gaze to Chuuya and tilted his head. “You know, Chuuya, I didn’t take you for one at first because you have that look about you that suggests you’re a brute, but you’re actually kind of a softie, aren’t you?” He lifted a hand and started counting one by one. “You gave me your scarf, you offered to give me a brush, you might come visit me on Christmas, now you’re inviting me to come visit you.”
Chuuya clicked his tongue and refused to meet Dazai’s eyes. “I’m just throwing that out there. I can keep coming to visit you instead, but I just thought—”
A shadow danced in the corner of his vision. Dazai leaned in close and lifted Chuuya’s chin with a thumb and finger until their gazes met, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Then I should probably accept your invitation before you take it back, huh?”
Breath tickled Chuuya’s lips, Dazai’s face impossibly close to his own. He felt heat radiating from Dazai. An inferno, of which it felt like its flames licked at his skin and would engulf him in the blink of an eye with the slightest movement. Dazai refused to let go, his grip firm and steady, forcing Chuuya to continue looking at him.
“I really did miss you,” Dazai whispered, words full of longing. It gave his voice a strangely hypnotic quality. Their lips met in a short but sweet kiss, and he let go, easing back. “Whenever a long time goes by without us seeing each other, I’ve wondered if something bad happened or if you’ve gotten sick.” He heaved a sigh and released the tension in his shoulders. “I’ve gotten too used to seeing you, and it’s all your fault, Chuuya.”
When they parted, Chuuya blinked a few times. It took a while for Dazai’s words to register in his head, the tingle of Dazai’s lips on his own lingering. How Dazai looked at him made him uncomfortable—like the windows to his soul were wide open for Dazai’s viewing pleasure and he was seeing it all. Right down to the rawest, most vulnerable part of Chuuya. It became unbearable, and he tore his gaze away. Where Dazai seemed to see it all and knew it all, Chuuya only knew what he witnessed on the surface, and what he was allowed to see; a reminder that they were polar opposites and stumbled into each other’s lives by way of coincidence, molding to one another despite the rift they had to cross.
“Like I said, if you want to come visit sometime, I’m throwing it out there.”
It was all Chuuya could manage, not trusting his voice to keep going because he feared it’d crack. Then, he cleared his throat and got up, dusting himself off. He felt mixed about all of…this ever since the night they had sex and lain together watching the stars twinkle in the night sky. Most of what he felt was foreign. Not unpleasant, but a strangle tumbling in his stomach like he could be sick at any moment, yet simultaneously rode an unknown high that his brain couldn’t understand, only that it thrummed in his veins. And every time he glanced at Dazai, it amplified that very feeling.
What it was, he did not know. But maybe that was why he sometimes got cold feet about making the trip out here and sometimes he backed out at the last minute and stayed at home instead. Work, Chuuya reasoned. He was just swamped with work. Something told him to RUN, but run where? And what was he running from? Keep calm. Breathe in.
Eventually, Dazai stretched his arms above him and let out a small yawn. He was either ready for bed or still hadn’t woken up yet. How his eyes drooped and his eyelids weighed down suggested the former. He rubbed at them with a fist and shook droplets of water off his feet before putting his socks and sandals back on.
“I’ll think about it.” Dazai tossed one end of the scarf over his shoulder and fixed his haori. “It’s exhausting to be around a lot of people. In the past, I used to think ‘what if I accidentally exposed myself and a human saw what I really was?’ Because I’m so used to going a long time without anyone coming by.”
“Gotta be honest with you, I think people would think they’re seeing things if they saw this,” Chuuya said and gestured to Dazai with a flick of his hand. Between the white ears atop Dazai’s head and his nine tails, someone would sooner think that they were hallucinating or that Dazai was in an elaborate costume than believe that divine beings walked the earth.
“Oh!” Dazai clapped his hands, a gleam in his eyes. “I could always cast an illusion and make people really think they’re seeing things. Just like I did to you.”
Chuuya frowned at him. A shiver ran up his spine when he recalled the mirage of a body and innards splattered on the floor, the soft chewing of teeth into flesh—nonono. “What? No, don’t do that. You have to act normal if you come by.” He pointed to Dazai’s ears and then his tails. “That means those things have to go.”
The two of them walked off, loose leaves crunching beneath their feet. The sun hung high in the sky and shined down upon them, piercing through the dense trees and illuminating forest floor in a warm glow. A bird squawked nearby and took off into the sky. Dazai stopped near a pair of bushes. Rosy berries sparkled in the light. He got down on one knee and reached in, pushing aside some of the leaves.
“What’re you doing?”
“Do you want some berries?” Dazai asked as he plucked a handful off from a branch and held them out to Chuuya.
Eyes falling upon the berries in Dazai’s hand, Chuuya stared. They certainly looked appealing with how brilliantly they shined. Like a handful of candies. But too appealing. He then deadpanned at Dazai and raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious? I’m not eating any wild berries. They could be poisonous.”
That fact didn’t seem to cross Dazai’s mind, as he blinked in confusion. After a few more moments, he picked out a berry at random and popped it into his mouth. “Huh, I guess so.” He chewed a few times and hummed in delight. “I never really thought about the fact that the human body has limitations I don’t need to worry about.”
Scoffing and muttering under his breath about how he couldn’t believe Dazai managed to be both intelligent and clueless at the same time, Chuuya made his way back to the worn path that led both up and down the mountain. Familiar gray cobblestone colored in fallen leaves. Dazai hurried after him and they walked in sync, ascending the peak.
“There’s a lot of neat landmarks around here that you’ve probably never seen, huh?”
To Chuuya’s immediate left, stone-cold statues bundled in their usual red scarves and decorated in autumn-shedding foliage. Beyond, trees as far as the eye could see, but he could not see into their depths. Bony limbed shadows stretched out from what looked like one of many entrances into another part of the forest. The bubbling of the river faded into the background the farther they walked. “I’ve never gone off the path because it’s dangerous. There’s signs all over the place warning people not to wander.”
“I see.” A pause. “That’s probably for the best. There’s lots of wild animals, but many of them are going into hibernation right around this time.”
Vermillion archway greeted them at the summit. Sprawling oak tree in the center of the courtyard waved, shivered, and shook off a couple of trees. As expected, all the fox statues circling the vicinity remained in good condition and taken care of, showing no signs of wear and time from either time or elements of the weather. By the temple, the flower garden looked a little faded compared to how bright their petals were during the summer. Everything had a grayish tint to it, the threat of snow with the falling temperatures.
Dazai pointed somewhere off to the side, back down in the direction of the mountain. “We already passed it, but a little farther up from where the river was there’s a little stone shrine. It holds no real significance, but it’s a nice place to sunbathe. It’s also surrounded by fruit trees, but they’re not in bloom this time of year.”
Both of them sat on the bench overlooking the cliffside. Chuuya kicked a few pebbles off the edge. Soundless.
“So that’s what you do all day, huh?” Chuuya eyed Dazai. “Lay in the sun?”
A sheepish expression graced Dazai’s features. “Gee, Chuuya, you don’t have to put it like that—making it sound like I do absolutely nothing all day.”
“I mean…”
Chuckling, Dazai waved a hand and cut off Chuuya before he could say anything else. “I get it.” He hid his hands in the sleeves of his kimono and looked out at the horizon. “Say, I wanted to ask earlier. Why do you think you’re going to grow old and die?”
The question sounded rhetorical to Chuuya. It had a self-explanatory answer because, well, the cycle of life and all that. People lived, people died. Birth and rebirth. Like a phoenix rising up from the ashes. All that symbolic nonsense. Dazai just so happened to be the exception to that rather than the rule. Chuuya also didn’t appreciate this topic being brought up again because the concept of mortality greeted him on a near-daily basis. Whenever his back ached after a long day. Whenever he looked forward to sleeping in all weekend instead of going out and partying all night like he used to when he was younger. Now? His idea of a good night was sitting back and relaxing with a small glass of wine, taking a hot bath, and going right to bed. He was far from old in the literal sense, but he felt it.
Mortality meant getting older and things not working as well as they used to. Just as he said earlier.
“Are you asking me seriously, or…?”
When Dazai looked at him expressionless, that told him yes.
“Are you messing around with me? I mean, what else is there for me to say?” Chuuya turned to face him with narrowed eyes. “People grow old and die, Dazai. Need me to spell it out for you?”
Was that a smile on Dazai’s…never mind, it was gone. But that was what it boiled down to, wasn’t it? Dazai fucking around with him, falling back into their usual thing at Chuuya’s expense. He really, really needed to accept that Dazai wasn’t an ordinary person. Or a person. And he couldn’t be treated and approached as such. His ulterior motives might’ve not included harming or killing Chuuya, but Dazai’s erratic behavior ensured Chuuya never let his guard down for too long or got too comfortable.
Colors, scenes, and half-formed phrases still littered his mind. Up in flames, they went. He couldn’t focus on any one thought for more than a few seconds before he was yanked in another direction. He was a diary come undone: ink of blood, and utensil, flesh.
Dazai’s arm rose for a second as if he were about to put it on Chuuya’s shoulder. He didn’t, but the intention was there. There was a sadness in there—or was it in Chuuya, from the dream? It was still with him, the pitiful hey he told Dazai earlier this morning, even now…
“No. When I asked you that, I meant why do you think you’re going to die?” Dazai shifted so that he faced Chuuya and he leaned against the bench, attention undivided.
He seemed to be testing Chuuya. He was looking for an answer that wasn’t obvious. But when Chuuya dug through the utter chaos of his mind, he came up empty-handed. He didn’t have an answer to that, whatever answer it was that Dazai wanted to hear. This didn’t seem very fair because the scale tipped heavily in Dazai’s favor, and Chuuya was lost in the dark, feeling around aimlessly for a switch that didn’t exist. The best he could come up with was the obvious: people grew old and died. What more was there to debate? Nothing. He had no interest in philosophical bullshit if that was the path they were going down.
“Seriously. If you’re fucking with me, I’m not in the mood to entertain it.”
Sighing, Dazai closed his eyes briefly. For once he had neither a smile nor a frown. The amusement vanished. What remained was deep contemplation for something that went unsaid. “I have bad news for you, Chuuya.”
Chuuya’s head snapped in Dazai’s direction. “What do you mean ‘bad news’? This isn’t funny.”
It’s not funny. It’s not funny. It’s. Not. Funny. But Dazai wasn’t laughing. Neither of them were. The wind howled around them. Chuuya’s eyes darted around, taking in the scene laid out in front of them, and behind—the courtyard. He half-expected the living mist to return with the bad omen of bad news. But nothing. He felt a pair of eyes bore into him, staring hard.
Mm, the delights of existence. A constant anguish and concern over horrible things he didn’t even know about, but could imagine so vividly. Ha ha. He was tired of it.
“Relax.” This time Dazai reached out all the way and caressed Chuuya’s arm. His fingers grazed over the back of a gloved hand and he gave it a light pat. “You’re getting all tense for no reason. When I said bad news, I…” he trailed off and considered whether or not to keep talking. “I don’t mean it in an actual bad way that you might think.” Dazai smiled then, but it felt off. Hollow.
“Then can you just spit it out?”
After scooting closer, Dazai threw his arms around Chuuya’s neck and pulled him into a hug. He rested his chin on Chuuya’s shoulder, voice coming out in a whisper: “Remind me how that story of yours ends again?”
Whether intentional or not, Dazai’s weight against him helped ground him in reality. He let out a shaky breath and cleared his thoughts. Fear was only true if you allowed it to be. Everything was nothing if you decided it was nothing. Right? That relieved him. He was here. On the mountain. Breathing. Not at home. Right. Not a dream. Not a nightmare. He was not sure what he felt. Loss? There were no revelations; no epiphanies; only he.
“Uh—it ended with the nine-tailed fox’s victim dying and getting eaten.” He felt a movement against his neck. Something like the twitch of lips. But Dazai’s face was buried and out of sight. “Why?”
“I just needed a refresher,” Dazai said as he eased back to look at Chuuya fully. “And you learned that’s obviously not the truth now. Just a silly bedtime story getting worse and worse over time.” He hesitated and got up, helping Chuuya to stand. “When’s your birthday?”
Chuuya squinted at him suspiciously, but the neutral look Dazai gave did not offer any hints. “It’s not for a while. It’s in April. I swear to god if you’re planning something…”
“Don’t worry.” Dazai’s voice turned upbeat and he laced his fingers through Chuuya’s own, swaying their hands together. “I can tell you’re still not very happy with what I said, but I really do mean that it’s nothing bad, necessarily. I’ll tell you on your birthday—” A short pause. “How the story really ends. How’s that?”
His throat went dry because the unthinkable was back in his thoughts and his eyes flickered from where Dazai’s heart was to their joined hands and back to his features. They were both reluctant to let go. Dazai even tightened his grip. It had been both too long and too soon since the last time Chuuya saw such a look in his eyes. Not quite sadness. But an inner turmoil. Not the end and not a farewell, but it came down to how long it would be until the next time Chuuya visited.
Painful as it was, Chuuya mustered a smile and leaned up to quickly kiss Dazai on the lips before letting go. Leaving this time around was somehow a lot more painful than last time—when they left under the guidance of the stars and Chuuya fought the biting cold all the way home while Dazai returned to this. This, because he never went anywhere. But that scarf: it looked nice. It looked at home around Dazai’s neck and Chuuya did not regret giving it to him even if he didn’t need it.
Feet scraped against stone, and they stood beneath the archway leading down the mountain. Dazai’s tails swished in the wind and he held a hopeful look. “Next time you come, make sure you bring that brush you promised.”
“Hey, don’t twist my words.” Chuuya shot him a look, but his words lacked any threat. If anything, he was fighting back another, wider smile. “I never promised. I just said maybe I’ll bring a brush.”
Dazai waved and called out to him:
“Chuuya. Even with everything that goes on, never forget to live.”