Chapter Text
| AUGUST 1ST, 1999, 3:32PM |
Yokohama is a living city: it sits poised atop the graves that started it and sinks its claws into the residents one by one until leaving is out of the question. A den of sin, it’s been called so many times by so many people that Atsushi Nakajima barely knows.
When he’d gotten kicked out of his orphanage, barely eighteen with stolen money under his belt in the only act of defiance he’d ever been able to stomach, he was kicked out with a one-way train ticket to Yokohama and the cruel words of someone who hoped he’d die in a ditch.
The orphanage in his hometown is the only home Atsushi knows; hometown tastes odd on his tongue, but Yokohama tastes like freedom, tastes like fear, tastes like a city that never sleeps that won’t take two glances at him.
That, alone, pushes excitement through his veins like a heart attack.
The few stolen bills paid for the deposit on a cheap apartment, and while the apartment lies bare to the point of sleeping on the floor for a while, it isn’t a bad place. In fact, he hasn’t seen any bugs, the air conditioning works even if the heating doesn’t, and the sink even has clear tap water.
The theft and the subsequent price of rent grant him two months to find a job before he’s out on his ass again, not taking into account food, clothes, or trying to find and pay for any of his legal documents. It’s not like he has his birth certificate or any form of identification. The landlord had simply taken in his appearance and his crumpled bills and told him to take the key and that he likely won’t get his deposit back.
Not that he expects to.
For now, Atsushi fumbles with his keys, trying to lock his front door. It’s a finicky lock, giving him more trouble than anything, intent on going to the grocery store and praying things in Yokohama are about the same price as things back home ( not home, not home, that was never home.)
“You’ll end up having to replace that, y’know.”
Atsushi jumps so high in the air it’s a miracle he lands on his feet at all, whirling around with a shake to his shoulders at the sudden, loud voice, only to find a rather unintimidating man holding an old-school radio. “Erm - what?”
If his voice cracks, he prays the man doesn’t point it out.
The man doesn’t. He’s got a sly, unassuming smile, scruffy brown hair that seems to fight to obstruct his vision, and a beige trenchcoat reaching just past his knees, too big for him, but the radio obstructs anything else Atsushi could see of him. “Replace the lock. Everyone on this floor’s done it, so I figured I’d let you know.”
“And who are you?” Atsushi asks, raising a brow. His hackles aren’t raised, but he’s heard things about the citizens of Yokohama - all from the gossip of the other kids - and he doesn’t want to end up in a body bag because he didn’t understand some obscure rule about fumbling with the lock on your front door.
The man smiles again, kicking in the slightly-ajar door next to him. “Your neighbor, of course. You’re new around here, right?”
“Uh - yeah, I just moved in,” Atsushi says awkwardly, wanting to peer over and see inside the man’s apartment, just to see if it's filled with the same type of odd things the man has on his person, between the damn trench coat and the radio.
“No, I meant new to the city.”
“Oh. Um, yes, then. I just moved to the city, too.”
“That explains it,” the man laughs, pushing the door further open with his foot and stepping in; out of instinct, Atsushi follows in order to hear his words, abandoning his front door and almost stepping into someone else’s apartment without thinking, freezing in the doorway.
Have I already broken some obscure rule?
“Explains what?”
“That look on your face!” The man sets the radio on a desolate coffee table, with more cups and coffee stains than anything Atsushi’s ever wanted to see. The rest of the apartment is in a similar state, only held together by the scent of instant coffee that permeates the air so thickly it can’t be aired out. “All confused and such. Have you considered not going out in public?”
“What?” Look, Atsushi might be socially inept due to his upbringing, but he doesn’t think that’s just something you say to people.
“How old are you, kid?” the man asks, in a startling display of not listening to a single thing Atsushi’s saying.
“Eighteen!”
“And what’s your name?”
“N - Nakajima Atsushi!!” Atsushi practically shouts, indignant, and then another door slams down the hall and he remembers to keep his voice down; right, just because he’s not alone anymore doesn’t mean he can just shout things to shout, even if it’s to cover up his voice crack.
“Well, then, Atsushi,” the man says, clearing off the coffee table by simply shoving everything to the side to make room for the radio that he’d previously set on the ground, before glancing up at Atsushi with clear, knowing brown eyes. “My name is Dazai Osamu, and I suppose I’m your Yokohama welcoming party!”
“Um…” Atsushi struggles for words, if only because he’s never been confronted with someone so odd before. (That might be a product of living in an attic for eighteen years, though.) “Thank you?”
“Of course, it’s my pleasure. What brings you to Yokohama?”
Dazai gestures for Atsushi to sit with him, not on the couch, but on the floor, because the couch is filled with more empty coffee mugs and there’s a suspicious stain on the armrest that looks somewhat like dried blood, so Atsushi takes the invitation, crossing his legs and keeping an awkward, placid smile on his face. “I was, uh, given a train ticket here.”
“That’s it?”
“Is there supposed to be more?” Atsushi asks earnestly, tilting his head to the side in a show of real curiosity.
Dazai hums, gesturing vaguely around them in a confusing show of what does this man mean. “There is, for many people. Some move to Yokohama for the opportunities, some as a last resort, some as a relief. You moved here just because you had a train ticket here?”
“I couldn’t afford one anywhere else,” Atsushi mutters, his face flaming red at the admission.
“This isn’t a city where you can just go anywhere and get a job, you know.”
“I’m aware,” Atsushi sighs; he doesn’t even want to think of how hard it’s going to be, especially because he’s eighteen and hasn’t had any job experience whatsoever, no schooling to speak of, and can, apparently, barely give two sentences without stuttering or his voice cracking.
“What are you planning to do, then?” Dazai asks; there’s genuine curiosity in his tone, but the past still has Atsushi flinching away from the question. What kind of good could you do, boy?
God, he needs to get that voice out of his head; new city, new beginnings, new life.
“I don’t know,” Atsushi says honestly with a shrug of his shoulders. He’ll try his best, and… that’s as far as he’s gotten.
(He’ll be sleeping on the floor for a while, huh?)
“Well,” Dazai says slowly, his eyes scanning over Atsushi like he’s something to be studied, something to be observed and dissected. His brown eyes are bright, but there’s a shadow that perpetually seems to cover them; Atsushi wonders what kind of life leads to that.
He wonders if everyone was right about Yokohama, but that could be the mumblings of the paranoid part of his brain trying to convince him that everyone in this city has lived a life of crime and sin, to give credit to the labels the city has garnered across the news and across the grapevine.
Finally, Dazai continues, his big, overbearing smile back in full force, throwing Atsushi off guard for not the first time. “I might have a job opening for you.”
Atsushi fumbles, his fingers tapping against his leg at the same rate as his heartbeat. “You - you just met me. How can you just…?”
“Well, it’s very simple,” Dazai hums, gesturing vaguely around again like that explains things, knocking over a glass mug in the process; it doesn’t shatter, which is the most bizarre thing thus far, and that’s saying something. “You need a job, and my boss has been looking to hire someone, and I like your attitude a whole lot more than the current interviewee’s. Say, do you know anything about cars, Atsushi-kun?”
Atsushi blinks at the sudden use of both his given name and the honorific, nodding along to nod along. “Um… No. I don’t know a thing about cars.”
Dazai tsks. “We can fix that.”
“Are you a… mechanic?” Mind Atsushi if that seems to be an odd profession for this man he’s just met, his eccentric neighbor who seems like he should’ve walked straight out of the looney bin, just to make Atsushi’s day more interesting and more confusing.
Dazai lifts his finger, his grin even more overbearing than last time. “That I am. I work at a repair shop around here.”
“Around here?” This isn’t the best area, and Atsushi’s heard rumors…
“Yes, around here. Are you interested or not?”
“I… guess…” He doesn’t know a thing about cars; he’s been in a car three times in his life, and he doesn’t remember any of them because he’d been too young to remember. Ever since, he’s walked everywhere he needed to go, which was typically only around the orphanage grounds; he’d taken a train to get here, and the closest he’s been with a car since is when one nearly ran him over after he tried crossing the street to leave the train station.
A job is a job, though. Even if the prospects of him getting it are slim to none.
Dazai nods, as though this was the correct answer and Atsushi saying otherwise would’ve been a null, impossible turn of events. “Perfect, perfect. We’ll get you some different clothes, then, you certainly can’t show up to talk to the boss like this. When are you free?”
“All the time,” Atsushi says with a shrug. It’s true - he has, precisely, no money to his name, and the clothes on his back and the keys on his keyring are the extents of what he owns. He doesn’t even have a bank account, which is probably why the landlord looked at him with curiosity and suspicion when Atsushi had paid in all cash.
“I figured as much. We’ll discuss more tomorrow, take this and get yourself something decent to wear.” Dazai reaches into one of the overturned mugs, returning with a dozen or so crumpled bills that haven’t escaped either the smell or stain of week-old coffee. “Something fancy, perhaps.”
“Okay…?”
Dazai shoos him off, and Atsushi nods dumbly as he’s herded to the door, crumpled bills in hand with no knowledge of how much he’s actually holding or where the nearest department store is.
Dazai slams the door in his face once Atsushi’s out, and Atsushi, with more confusion than a newborn deer, ambles back over to his own door to actually, properly finish locking it.
Maybe he should buy a new lock too. Not because Dazai suggested it, but because being neighbors with Dazai feels like a safety hazard already.
| AUGUST 1ST, 1999, 6:12PM |
Atsushi buys a single outfit and a new door knob, though he doesn’t know how to install it and realizes only after he leaves the store that he probably needs a screwdriver and a hammer too. (Do you need a hammer for a lock…?)
Either way, the outfit is nice, nicer than the ratty black t-shirt he’s wearing now, that he’s had since he was fifteen and hit his final growth spurt. It’s a white button-down and black slacks, with suspenders and a belt. His sneakers will have to do, for now, but beyond that, he thinks it’s a presentable thing to wear to an interview.
He even has change, which startled him after he saw the total when he was at the self-checkout stand. He’ll give it back to Dazai, of course - but it startled him regardless.
Everything fits, too! He’d checked in the fitting rooms before he bought it. The shirt doesn’t necessarily suit his shoulders, but he has narrow shoulders, anyway, and most men’s shirts aren’t built for that.
With a more upbeat attitude than earlier, slightly more prepared for Dazai’s eccentric attitude, Atsushi returns to the 13th floor his apartment is on, stopping a few feet short to instead knock on Dazai’s door.
The sound of at least five locks unlatching greets him after a minute or two, though Dazai doesn’t say a word through the door while Atsushi waits.
The shopping bag in his arm crinkles as he smiles at Dazai once the door is opened, the man not saying a word as Atsushi invites himself in.
He’s always been told it’s rude to wear shoes in the house - they have house slippers for a reason, or most people do - but Dazai is wearing his and Atsushi doesn’t even want to think about the last time this carpet was cleaned, so he refrains from kicking them off by the door. “Um, I went to the store and did what you asked.”
“Oh, you did? Perfect! I was expecting it to take longer.”
“It’s just a trip to the store…”
“Well, you look like you’d get lost in a department store, you see, especially if you’re new to the area.”
“All the aisles are labeled, with arrows.”
“I figured you were illiterate.”
Atsushi debates the merits of finding another job interview as quickly as he found this one and leaving Dazai's apartment here and now. Unfortunately, the thought of a job keeps him held in place and keeps his eyes from rolling at Dazai’s insinuations. “Um, no, I can read.”
“Are you sure?” Dazai squints at him, forcing Atsushi to resist the urge to flinch away, his face once again red at the thought of being assumed illiterate. That might be the lack of schooling, but he had little else to do than read old classics, and so he’d like to think he’s rather well-versed in literature. “Well, fine enough. You found something nice to wear?”
“I think so, yes. And a lock.” He tacks that on quickly at the end, because he hadn’t been told he could buy the lock and it’s borrowed money; not something he’d stolen, not something he can simply spend without thinking, though that’s precisely what he’d done when he was in the store.
Dazai just nods, waving off any and all of Atsushi’s concerns. “Good, good. Your interview’s tomorrow.”
Atsushi would like to say his expression doesn’t morph into both shock and concern, but that’d be a lie. “Don’t I need to know about mechanics before I have an interview at a mechanic shop?”
“We’re an oddball shop,” Dazai winks, entirely disregarding his concerns. “Besides, you’ll catch on quickly. If all else fails, we can stick you at the front desk, because our current front desk lady is about to go back to college and we definitely can’t stick Kenji up there.”
“Kenji?”
“Kenji’s our latest part-timer,” Dazai hums, taking the shopping bag out of Atsushi’s hands to inspect the contents for himself, though he doesn’t grab the receipt sitting on the top or the change next to him. “He’s fourteen and far too honest for his own good.”
“Shouldn’t you be practicing honest business…?”
“We do, but Kenji likes to try and give away our services for free because of whatever reason people give him for breaking down,” Dazai says, grabbing the shirt out of the bag with a tsk. “Can you fold a shirt? It’s going to get wrinkled like this.”
“No,” Atsushi says flatly, gesturing to his current t-shirt.
“Well, I’ll have Kunikida teach you, then.”
Atsushi doesn’t ask about the named co-worker this time.
Frankly, as Dazai shoves the bag back into his hands, he’s more confused about Dazai’s motivations than anything: why would Dazai bother to go this far for someone he’s just met, who has no knowledge in the area of Dazai’s profession, who he’d met next to his door trying to lock his own?
It doesn’t make sense, but Atsushi isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even if it’ll end up backfiring on him, as most things do.
It doesn’t make sense.
But Atsushi doesn’t want to argue. Doesn’t want to think that this might be a trick or some way to get him to let his guard down, because he wants to think that there is kindness in the world and that, maybe, just maybe, something might go his way for once. That he might have a chance in the world that has shunned him for eighteen long years.
| AUGUST 2ND, 1999, 11:45AM |
The interview is at noon, and Dazai tells him not to worry; that he cleans up nicely for the people who apply here, you see, and Atsushi finds some relief in that before he walks into the main office and it looks more like an actual office than a mechanic’s repair shop, with the front desk lady in a button-up and tie, and one of the men lying on a roller underneath an expensive looking car in much the same apparel; it’s grease and oil-stained, but it’s still, clearly, higher quality than what Atsushi’s wearing.
He swallows back his nerves when Dazai pats him on the back, rather forcefully, and disappears off somewhere, leaving Atsushi alone.
He’s not qualified to work here. He glances past the office and into those glass windows, again, a glimpse into the shop, and all he sees is a car with its intestines spilled across the grimy floor, and someone trying to put it back together. He couldn’t name a single piece strewn across the floor.
He doesn’t even own a driver’s license, so why did Dazai think this was a good idea?
Atsushi waits impatiently, his foot tapping despite how much he’d like for it to stop, waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and he’s been told that being early to an interview is a good thing, but it was also Dazai who told him that twenty minutes ago and Dazai seems to be unaware of any clock beyond his own.
Is any of this right, even? Did Dazai actually call his boss or did Atsushi just show up and ruin things and -
“Nakajima Atsushi?”
Atsushi’s head snaps up far quicker than it should’ve, swallowing his nerves back at the kind-eyed front desk lady who offers him a small smile, which he doesn’t even think is pitying. “Um, yes?”
“Fukuzawa-san is ready for you,” she continues, gesturing behind her. Instead of being vague like Dazai is, though, she’s pointing directly to a door to her left, with a shiny silver nameplate that reads FUKUZAWA, who must be their boss.
Atsushi offers her a nod of appreciation, in turn, stepping past her and giving his new shirt another pat down, to rid it of any dirt that managed to cling in the five minutes he was sitting down, before walking toward the door and knocking.
“Come in,” sounds faintly from inside, and Atsushi turns the handle with sweaty hands, pasting a tense smile that certainly must look more like a grimace.
Atsushi wishes Dazai was in here with him, because he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say as he sits in the lone chair in front of Fukuzawa’s desk, overflowing with paperwork, and a small bonsai tree that seems undisturbed on the right corner of the giant furniture.
The blinds are pulled, and Atsushi, briefly, feels like this is one of those police investigations the other kids would play pretend about.
Fukuzawa offers him no smile, looking him up and down. “Nakajima Atsushi, you’re applying to be one of your mechanics?”
“Or - or any other position you’d need,” Atsushi stammers, internally cursing out his inability to talk when he’s nervous.
“This is quite the unusual situation, you understand,” Fukuzawa says, glancing Atsushi over and pursing his lips at whatever he finds. “It isn’t often I overlook others who have put in a proper application upon Dazai’s whims.”
“I can fill out a proper application!”
Fukuzawa waves off his concern. “Dazai tells me you’ve no prior work experience, so I see no need when you’re already in my office. Nakajima, are you familiar with Yokohama?”
“No, I just moved here, I’m - I’m still familiarizing myself with the area. Dazai’s my neighbor, I - I bumped into him yesterday and he’s taken it upon himself to show me around and all that,” Atsushi says, unaware if he’s blabbering or not, and still somehow unable to keep his mouth shut.
Fukuzawa hums. It’s unclear whether it’s meant to show approval or annoyance. “And you have no knowledge of cars or engines of any sort?”
“No… No, but I am a quick learner.”
“I’m sure,” Fukuzawa says dryly, likely an imitation of, you better be, if Dazai dragged you to my office and made me interview someone who clearly isn’t qualified, instead of other, more qualified applicants. “If you’re a quick learner, then, what do you think to gain from working here?”
A paycheck so that I’m not homeless, Atsushi thinks and doesn’t say. “Well - well, I’m severely lacking in life skills so far, and - and you can learn a lot from the people who come into a mechanic shop, and I’d be learning specialized knowledge about - engines and such, which means -”
“You can stop there, boy.”
Atsushi clams up and says, “okay,” so quickly that his voice practically squeaks.
Fukuzawa sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose; for such a somber and serious-looking man, he’s quite expressive. “I haven’t the slightest clue what to do with you,” he starts, and Atsushi braces for rejection of the first, and therefore most bizarre, interview he’s ever had. “You don’t know a thing about mechanics, you seem far too confused to work at the front, and I doubt any of my clientele would appreciate a novice working on their vehicles.”
Atsushi swallows once again.
“But,” Fukuzawa continues, “that is why new employees always work under a senior mechanic, and Dazai recommended you.”
“Um, that he did,” Atsushi nods enthusiastically as though that helps.
Fukuzawa levels him with a look that tells him to shut up, and so Atsushi listens to it, snapping his jaw shut. “Dazai recommended you, so you best not lie about being a quick learner. Haruno, at the front desk, will help you fill out your paperwork. Be here at eight A.M. sharp tomorrow morning and we’ll start on the basics.”
Atsushi doesn’t mean to stare; he really doesn’t. He stares without saying a word, though.
Fukuzawa clears his throat, and Atsushi snaps out of it.
“Thank you!” Atsushi says, jumping up. “Thank you, I promise I’ll be the quickest learner ever.”
This time, it’s a smile he’s greeted with, small as it is, and Atsushi bounds out of Fukuzawa’s office with a new job and a whole lot of things he probably should’ve asked that he didn’t think of before he left.
Haruno is more than happy to help him fill out employment paperwork, though she levels him with an odd stare when he tells her he doesn’t have a bank account yet so he can’t help with that, and she tells him that he can go cash his checks with the bank, that has nothing to do with him.
| AUGUST 2ND, 1999, 8:31PM |
A knock sounds at Atsushi’s door, and with little else to do, Atsushi answers, unsurprised at the sight of Dazai, still in his miraculously unstained work clothes, his hair even more disheveled than earlier, and a beaming smile as the man lets himself into the barren apartment.
“My, my, Atsushi-kun, you ought to get some furniture in here, I feel cold just looking around,” Dazai snickers, letting out a low whistle that forces Atsushi to resist the urge to flip him off.
“I don’t hoard things like you,” Atsushi says in a deadpan, far too comfortable with someone he should probably be sucking up to, he thinks.
Dazai tsks, likely thinking the same thing. “I have something to show you.”
Atsushi tilts his head in confusion if anything. “What could you possibly have to show me, Dazai-san? It’s late, you know!”
“I’m well aware, that’s why we’re going right now,” Dazai laughs, beckoning Atsushi to follow him when he takes two steps into the apartment, turns on his heel, and marches out.
It takes Atsushi a second or two longer to pull his shoes on, and by the time he manages both that and locking his front door - not yet switched to the lock he’d bought -, Dazai is standing by the elevator while waiting for it to come to their floor, hands in his pockets and fluttering from a wind that doesn’t exist beyond Dazai’s entire aloof demeanor.
“Can you tell me what you’re going to show me?” Atsushi asks.
“Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if I just told you. It’s a bit of a walk, though, I’ll admit.”
“Yay,” Atsushi murmurs to himself, if only thinking about Yokohama’s rampant crime rates and the association it shares with the shadows themselves.
Dazai either doesn’t hear him or chooses not to respond, but as they step into the elevator, Atsushi assumes it’s the former and doesn’t comment on that, either.
Dazai’s right: it is a long walk, but he’s by no means uncomfortable, for reasons Atsushi can’t quite understand.
If he has Dazai with him, at least, he has a strange-looking guy with a mood as consistent as a celebrity gossip column to ward off any would-be muggers, and so he can simply observe the city in the darkness, without being blinded by lights upon lights upon the backdrop of the blue and gray sky. Instead, it shows lights upon lights against a backdrop of a shadow, like it built itself up from nothing and to nothing it will descend when the sun rises once again.
Yokohama isn’t a welcoming city, Atsushi doesn’t think, looking away when he catches sight of the doors of a neon-lit club and money exchanging hands between a girl in a skimpy outfit and a pudgy man with grease so apparent that Atsushi can see it from across the street.
Dazai hums, the sound bringing Atsushi’s attention back to him. “The brothels and the strip clubs are legitimate businesses, you know. Though, I don’t know what she was exchanging money for.”
“Um, I think it’s pretty obvious?” Atsushi asks, his mind flashing to the very, very exposed outfit she was wearing before she disappeared back into the club.
“She wasn’t selling sex, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Dazai says without missing a beat. “Any working girl worth her salt knows better than to exchange payment like that. You can’t legally sell sex. The officers around here like to go undercover, have their fun, and arrest the girl after; it’s only a transaction if the money leaves the client’s hands and into the girl’s. If the money, however, is left on a nightstand, well - that’s plausible deniability, no?”
“I - I suppose,” Atsushi says, and he doesn’t ask why Dazai would know that.
“She was selling drugs, I’d bet. Or maybe it’s hush money, I don’t know, but it wasn’t sex,” Dazai shrugs, beckoning Atsushi to pick his mouth up off the jaw and continue following after him.
Atsushi nods because he doesn’t know what to say to that, so he’ll leave it alone.
He doesn’t see anything that overtly attention-grabbing the rest of their walk, but he notes with a hint of fear that they’ve wandered into the industrial district, and he’s known Dazai for a grand total of two days now.
If Dazai chooses to ax murder him in a warehouse, he figures he deserves it because he did nothing to tell him off or even think, hey, this is a bad idea, I’m going to get murdered because I’m following a guy I just met into the streets at night in a city I’m unfamiliar with, and no one will be able to report me missing, ever.
He’s just known for making smart decisions, isn’t he?
If Dazai…
“Stop worrying,” Dazai says, coming to a dead stop in front of Atsushi, forcing him to bump into the odd man. “If I wanted to murder you, I would’ve done it by now.”
Atsushi swallows, taking a step back. “That isn’t - that isn’t reassuring, you know.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“Why are we stopped?”
Dazai spreads his arms to gesture to the dingy old warehouse in front of them, clearly out of commission for years, as is typical of the Yokohama industrial district since the recession, or so that’s what Atsushi’s last library book said before he returned it.
Unlike all the other warehouses, though, there’s a barbed wire fence in front of them, moderately high-tech with the keypad that sits on the latch of the gate in front of them.
Atsushi is not jumping fences for whatever Dazai wants to show him, but before he can voice this, Dazai inputs a code into the keypad and the gate clicks open.
Atsushi blinks.
Dazai throws the gate open, laughter bubbling up in his throat that sounds just shy of being genuine. “What, did you think I was going to make you break in?”
Atsushi chooses to just laugh nervously in response, following behind Dazai much like a lost puppy or a stray cat who’s been fed, sticking to the man’s side, acutely aware of the smell of cheap cologne - which is more likely to be motor oil and Chinese take-out - that radiates off him.
The warehouse isn’t that intimidating once Dazai rattles open a side door, flicking on a warehouse worth of lights from a single set of switches that sit near the entry, below a shell full of keys upon keys upon keys.
From here, Atsushi can only see the front area, and he supposes it looks much like the shop Dazai had gotten him hired at - what was the name of the place, anyway? The Agency of Repairs?
(Either way, it’s more fitting for an office than a mechanic’s, but the people there dressed far nicer than they should’ve for a mechanic’s, too.)
“Is this an out-of-commission shop?” Atsushi wonders aloud, intending to poke around and see the main cavern of the warehouse, past the next door and its small glass window, but Dazai tsks him and blocks his path. The movement is smooth, but the air is used to being dormant, kicking up dust with every inhale and motion.
Dazai shakes his head, that ominous grin back in full force, pulling at his skin like the man isn’t used to smiling like this: like he doesn’t remember how to. “No, it most certainly isn’t.”
With that, Dazai stops blocking him from seeing the rest of the warehouse, opening the door with a flourish into the supposed shop.
This isn’t an out-of-commission shop, but - the stained cement floor is covered in various car parts and tools, all either half-rusted or shining new silver, all surrounding cars in various states of disrepair; not a single vehicle - of six - is fully put-together; one has the hood open and an engine block sitting outside the car, a void where it should be; another has the frame rusted away, a sander sitting unplugged next to it.
Everything sits with a heavy coat of dust, apparent underneath the now-shining lights.
Dazai greets the space and the reek of dust and oil with that same ominous grin. “This, my dear Atsushi-kun, is my workshop.”
Atsushi takes one look at the mess and then toward Dazai, finding the same messiness in his apartment as there is here. “And I needed to see it, why…?”
Whatever reaction Dazai was expecting, it wasn’t that, based on the way he visibly deflates and rolls his eyes. “So picky, so picky.”
“That’s not picky? It’s a question…?”
“Impatient, I meant!” Before Atsushi has the chance to respond to that, once again, Dazai continues. “As you can see, I don’t tend to spend much time here anymore. However - the best way to learn is here!”
“With… what?”
“All my old projects, of course.”
Atsushi eyes the tons of useless metal with their innards scattered about with little regard for organization or clarity, gaze suspicious. “You think I’ll learn anything from these?”
“It’s how I learned.”
“And didn’t finish.”
“I didn’t finish for another reason,” Dazai sighs, his voice taking on a more sullen tone, but given the man’s theatrics so far, Atsushi can’t tell if it’s genuine or not. (He’s wondering why the power to this old place is still on if Dazai doesn’t even come around.) “But now, it’s a good place for you to practice and learn about builds. Most of the time, we won’t be dealing with anything this severe, but you should know your craft inside and out.”
“I still find it hard to believe you’re a mechanic,” Atsushi says honestly, but he walks into the room, careful not to kick anything on the ground; he wouldn’t be surprised to find bugs in here, not at all. Beyond the dust, the scent of whiskey sours everything; Atsushi finds himself tapping at his nose to get rid of the strange feeling, a frown pulling at his face. “You’re gonna help me with it, at least, right?”
Dazai scoffs. “No, I have a much better idea in mind for you.”
“And what would that be?” Atsushi asks with hesitation, debating the merits of running out the door without Dazai managing to catch him and disembowel him as he has with these cars.
“See, I have a nice car here,” he says, pointing at one of two vehicles with a sheet pulled over it, though the gray sheet itself does nothing to hide how the car doesn’t have a windshield and the entire front bumper is crumpled inward. “And if you can fix it up, it’s all yours.”
“I don’t have a license,” Atsushi frowns. Given Dazai’s tone, he feels like he’s supposed to understand something, that they’re supposed to be having a conversation within the conversation, but what use is a car to someone who can’t drive?
Dazai’s smile widens once again. “You won’t need one. Tell me, what is Yokohama’s greatest attraction?”
Atsushi hadn’t exactly read a tourist’s magazine before he arrived, so he shrugs and tilts his head to the side in lieu of an answer. No clue, Dazai, no clue.
“Well,” Dazai starts slowly, building and building the anticipation he has with the way his own foot keeps tapping, “It’s called the Portside, and it’s something of an open secret if you’re going to work at the shop.”
“What’s the Portside?” Atsushi asks curiously.
“I’ll show you tomorrow,” Dazai promises. “For now, let’s show you the basics, shall we?”
| AUGUST 3RD, 1999, 11:49PM |
Dazai drags him out of work after a boring day of training at the shop, which includes, but is not limited to, getting introduced to everyone and being stuck behind the counter with Haruno because he simply doesn’t know enough even to shadow one of the senior mechanics, going over paperwork and desperately trying to stay out of the way whenever someone approached the lobby.
All day, however, Dazai’s been giddy until the end of the day: Haruno tells him that this isn’t out of the ordinary and that Dazai is known for being an aloof, useless piece of shit who doesn’t do his work; he can’t tell if it’s loathing or affection in her tone, so he doesn’t ask.
He isn’t expected to get pulled away before they can even start in the direction of their apartments, Dazai’s grip tight enough on his arm to leave crescent indentations of his nails in Atsushi’s arm, but Atsushi doesn’t reprimand him.
“Where are we going?” Atsushi whines regardless because he’d like to get some sleep, really, and maybe get around to figuring out what to do with his empty, empty apartment for the time being.
Dazai doesn’t glance back at him, but he can tell the man is grinning. “To the Portside, of course. I said I’d show you, didn’t I?”
“It’s almost midnight, I don’t think anyone -”
“Oh, it isn’t one of those kinds of businesses,” Dazai laughs, tugging Atsushi along even further, giddy in a way that Atsushi didn’t know the man was capable of.
It makes Atsushi less inclined to follow, but he’s practically being forced, and so in turn, doesn’t force the issue.
"Then what kind of business is it?" Atsushi asks after a few minutes of silence, the shuffling of his feet the only sound next to Dazai's silent footsteps as they descend further and further into the darker parts of Yokohama; they're getting close to the ocean, at least, the waves gently raging across the darkened horizon, always a force of nature to be remembered and memorialized.
“You’ll see,” Dazai says once again.
For a mechanic, Dazai Osamu is an odd man: he dresses like a Detective and he acts like a criminal, but Atsushi isn’t well-versed in etiquette and so, perhaps, Dazai is simply acting on par for a citizen of Yokohama.
The closer they get to the ocean, the louder the noise gets.
It’s quiet at first, a low humming, but it grows and grows, a static that turns into a scream with every corner they turn; Atsushi can make out voices, and engines, and suddenly, the darkness is scared away by shining, portable lights set-up around an abandoned parking lot.
Abandoned in that there is no business to own it, but tonight, it’s packed.
Everywhere Atsushi glances has someone, all clad in either dark clothes or something neon, shining in the dark like stars themselves; and the stars of the show certainly make the most of it, the parking lot arranged into neat rows.
Each row has car upon car upon car, and none of them look like the models Atsushi sees on the street. No, these beasts are something else entirely: messy paint jobs and flaking paint and engines that purr, hoods popped open or shut closed with their driver sitting on top of them.
Atsushi must spend too long staring because Dazai pulls him into the crowd and before he knows it, there’s a mask being shoved into his face. A masquerade-type mask, black with silver accents, and an elastic band secured around the sides of the mask.
“Wear it,” Dazai says, his voice low. When Atsushi glances up toward the man, he has a mask, too; it’s black-and-red, curling around the edges with glitter in the crevices. It’s an odd fit, but it still suits him, Atsushi thinks. “You don’t want to get recognized here.”
“What’s going on?” Atsushi asks, though not suspicious. More… awestruck.
It isn’t like anything he’s ever seen before.
Atsushi is used to the gloom and the bitterness that seeped through every crack of his old town, of the orphanage, of the people on the train he’d taken to Yokohama: used to the dull, neutral clothes, don’t go out past ten if you know what’s good for you, to the energy that lived six feet underground.
Here, however, they must be digging up the dead, because it’s alive. Even the air crackles with anticipation, though for what he doesn’t know, and the giddiness that had clung to Dazai like a second skin is something Atsushi understands now.
“This is part of the Portside,” Dazai says quietly, as Atsushi fashions the mask over his face, tucking the elastic band under his hair. Dazai has a hold of one of Atsushi’s suspenders, keeping him closer so as to not get lost in the crowd. “It’s a car meet.”
“So the Portside is a car thing?” Atsushi asks, perhaps stupidly, but in his defense, he doesn’t know a damn thing about mechanics and he should probably know more before Dazai dragged him here.
“It’s whatever it needs to be for the night, and right now, yes, it’s a car thing.”
“Oh… I don’t think I’ll be much use here, I’m afraid,” Atsushi frowns. “You know I don’t know enough yet.”
“You know plenty,” Dazai shrugs, nonchalantly, as though Atsushi didn’t stay up until four A.M. last night nearly sobbing because he couldn’t understand a goddamn thing going on with any of Dazai’s projects and couldn’t find any manuals or guidebooks. “Besides, no one expects you to do anything. You’re just here to watch. The real fun hasn’t even started yet.”
Atsushi sighs, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose and finding the mask in the way, and so he settles for awkwardly pinching his nostrils. “I don’t even want to ask. Am I going to get arrested? Is that why we’re wearing masks?”
Dazai, clearly, feels no remorse as he elbows someone out of the way, on a warpath to somewhere, though Atsushi murmurs a hasty apology. “Something like that.”
“You’re being real vague, you know?”
“Well aware, kiddo.”
“Kiddo?” Atsushi scoffs.
“I can’t call you by your name, now can I?” Dazai laughs, his shoulders shaking with the movement, all the way down to where he’s got Atsushi’s suspender in his hand like a goddamn child leash.
God, Atsushi really shouldn’t be so trusting.
“Then what do I call you?” Atsushi asks, suspicious. Perhaps this is a front for human trafficking. The last time he thought Dazai was going to murder him, though, he got a whole bunch of side projects that he couldn’t understand.
You know what, maybe the human trafficking thing won’t be so bad. Well, depending on the kind of trafficking, he supposes… labor or sex and all. Very different treatment, he thinks.
Dazai turns back, for the first time in minutes, his brown eyes sparkling with something, something like life, crinkling around the edges from his smile as his grip tightens to the point of his knuckles turning white. “Nothing , okay? I don’t need to have a name here.”
Nothing, huh?
Well, Atsushi doesn’t know precisely how to do that, but he sincerely doubts he’ll be swarmed with people.
Before he can respond, Dazai pulls him along, and finally, there’s enough break in the crowd for Atsushi to breathe as he stops, nearly bumping into the man in front of him once again.
There Dazai stands, staring at a gap in the lines of cars. It’s two empty spots, actually, neither filled with a car like the others, but people mull around regardless. They have to, for the row of flowers lying on the ground to have gathered so quickly.
The flowers are pretty, yes, but the oddest thing about the arrangement isn’t the two-foot-tall pile of flowers on each spot, but rather the paint splattered across each petal, a messy arrangement of reds and purple and black.
And the smell.
Some of it isn’t paint at all, Atsushi realizes: it’s motor oil.
That certainly can’t be good for the flowers, but it’s… it’s beautiful, in its own way.
In front of the pile of flowers, paint, and motor oil is a piece of duct tape across the cracked pavement, painted over in neons by whoever had decided to put it down.
One reads HUMAN_ERROR, and the one next to it lies obscured by one of the flowers, covering the kanji in paint and oil, all red, like a murder scene.
Atsushi’s brow furrows, glancing from the space to Dazai, who’s watching the arrangement with a small, barely-there smile on his face, hair obscuring whatever it is in his gaze. “Human Error, huh?”
“An old legend in the circuit,” Dazai explains with a hum, something gentle in his tone.
“I suppose not. Are you going to explain what’s really going on, now?”
When Dazai’s gaze slides to the other arrangement of flowers, he heaves a sigh, releasing Atsushi’s suspender and looking at the younger with a heavy, heavy expression, hidden off from the world, somewhere Atsushi can’t reach him. “The Portside is known as Yokohama’s most notorious circuit. The car meet is one of the few non-illegal things they do, but before night’s end, it’ll descend into the highway races.”
“The highway races…?”
“You’ll see,” Dazai repeats once again. “It’ll be good for you to see what you’re really dealing with. You’ll need a name, too.”
“A name?”
“A name,” Dazai repeats.
At this moment, with a fluorescent light shining down on them in the dark, flower tributes in front of them, and the surrounding, flurried crowd, the light falls around Dazai’s hair like a halo, the mask seeping all color from his face and directing it back to brown eyes.
At this moment, he looks more like a God than a human.
Still, Dazai smiles, hollow, and the illusion is somewhat broken. “It’ll come to you eventually. You best go around looking at the mods, you’ll have to figure out how to install and fix them yourself soon.”
“The - we - repair these?” Atsushi asks, gaping like an idiot. “These aren’t normal… alterations, then?”
Dazai laughs, again, the sound quieter than usual. “No, they aren’t. The Portside is like the blemish of Yokohama, but one of the few things that keep it running.”
“A circuit -” Atsushi murmurs, more to himself than anything.
Circuit, circuit, circuit. Highway races. Mods. Alterations. Mechanics.
Street-racing.
Dazai puts his hand over Atsushi’s mouth, restraining, but not tight. “You know how to keep a secret?”
Atsushi nods dumbly.
Dazai takes his hand off Atsushi’s mouth and gestures to him to continue past the tributes. “Let’s keep looking around. There are a few faces I’d like to check up on.”
Tributes. Legends. Street-racing. Human Error. You’ll need a name. The circuit.
| AUGUST 4TH, 1999, 2:31AM |
Atsushi finds the circuit - the car meet - is just the first chapter in a much, much larger story; he meanders around. glancing at the open engines and smiling like an airhead whenever one of the drivers - racers? - starts trying to explain to him how the engine works and how the mods make it quicker, so on and so forth, and he doesn’t understand a word.
Most importantly, despite his iron grip from earlier, Dazai still abandons Atsushi ten minutes past one in the morning; ten minutes before the supposed highway races are meant to start, and Atsushi doesn’t know how they manage it, but the car meet manages to dissolve entirely in that ten minutes and relocate less than a mile away, pulled off from the port and the drawl of the ocean and instead to the trash-filled side of a stretch of highway.
The highway itself soars over the ground with fifty-foot supports anchoring it to the ground, and the ground level of the highway is still further out than Atsushi can see until the other circuit-goers clamber up rungs of a ladder anchored into the supports themselves.
Atsushi just watches, for a minute.
He has little doubt everything happening right now would get him a heavy penalty if he were to be found here, but there’s something exhilarating in being part of the crowd: it makes it easy for him to ignore his nerves and follow a girl with red hair as she scales the ladder rungs.
Where things get tricky is the top of the concrete support.
See, the support is halfway under the highway, in order to keep it from needing two supports in one area. That means there’s no way to get from underneath the highway to the top of the highway from the support.
Unless, of course, there are more rungs anchored to the bottom of the highway, of which people seem to be gilding past easily, like monkey bars on the playground rather than certain death fifty-feet in the air.
The girl in front of Atsushi looks back, her hair in twin braids that obscure what little of her face is visible beneath a red-and-gold mask, styled more like a superhero’s domino mask than the masquerade style Atsushi is wearing. “Don’t be nervous,” she says, less reassuring and more like she’s annoyed that she can feel his nerves. “The more nervous you are, the worse it is.”
He can see, from when she goes up a rung, that she must be speaking from experience: the calluses on her hands speak of that much, and there’s rust clinging to her fingers from the edges of the rungs that aren’t used as often, dirt under her nails from the boots of the person ahead of her.
This is a terrible, terrible idea.
But the line moves quickly and suddenly Atsushi is supposed to have the upper-body strength to jump from a ladder fifty feet in the air to a single piece of metal hanging fifty feet in the air with questionable anchoring.
His hands are sweating.
Oh, God, that’s - that’s possibly the worst fucking thing that could happen, okay, Atsushi, okay, breathe.
Atsushi takes a deep breath in, watching the girl in front of him perform the transition; she pivots one of her feet on the rung, the one furthest from him, twisting her body in the direction of the vertical rungs and keeps one hand on the current rung before releasing that, too; she’s balancing entirely with her weight pressed toward the support, before she jumps off with the twisted foot and grabs the vertical rung easily, her knuckles straining from holding up her whole weight.
Okay, Atsushi can do that too, right?
(If he can’t -)
The person behind him must be annoyed at how long he’s taking, but Atsushi’s heart beats so quickly in his chest as he scales the last few safe rungs that he’s certain everyone can hear it.
As he carefully positions his body the same way the girl did, albeit with his hands, safely, on the rung, the girl in front of him twists around once again. “You’ll ruin your jump if you don’t release your hands first.”
“But -”
“It’s a long drop,” she says, conversationally. “There’s some padding down there, but you’d die.”
“I - I - I can see that.”
“Don’t be nervous. It’s just like a playground.”
Well, I never got to play on a playground, Atsushi thinks with a sarcastic laugh to himself, swallowing back his nerves and praying to a God that probably died when Dazai was born that he can make this jump. And the next twenty feet until he can haul himself up onto safe, sweet, solid concrete.
If he falls, he won't recover. It's simple. If his hands slip, the only one to mourn him will be the girl in front of him rolling her eyes.
If he dies, surviving eighteen years in Hell wasn't even worth it.
Well, that's shitty motivation; still, Atsushi forces himself to let go of the safe rung in front of him, drying his palms on his hands to the beat of his heart - before making the jump.
For a moment, a single, heart-stopping moment, Atsushi's entire body is in the air, nothing to keep him up beyond the null effect of gravity before it crashes down on him.
And he falls.
It isn't graceful. One minute he is in the air and the next, his hand grabs the rung, his entire body jolting down with the force as gravity returns to him, weight held on one hand before he scrambles to grasp the rung with his other hand, palms slick.
Atsushi’s shoulders already ache, but he doesn’t know if it’s from the exertion or the terrr, his heart stuttering in his ribcage and threatening to drop to the bottom with the rest of his fucking body.
Twenty feet. Twenty feet and then he can leave.
His palms are slick but he doesn’t dare try to release one to wipe it off, instead thanking his recent growth spurt that his arms are longer and it’s easier to reach the next rung; the girl in front of him is quick, and it’s like he’s chasing after her.
If this is what being on a playground is like, Atsushi is glad he never had that experience.
By the last rung, Atsushi’s hands feel like they’re going to fall off and his body is taut with tension, sweating even more than when he started, and when he sees the red-head turn from the last rung and honest-to-God pull herself up, like a pull-up, onto the next rung, he almost starts crying.
If Dazai warned him he might die, things might be different, but he can’t turn back now.
From here, though, clinging onto the bottom edge of the raised highway with the ocean and the darkened sky in the background, the tribute of flowers and paint lying as the only source of color with a single light shining on them, Yokohama almost feels like home.
As close to home as a stray will ever get, at least.
There are people behind him, though, and Atsushi’s pinky slips as he maneuvers around like the girl had, twisting his body to face the cement side of the highway where the rungs are, rather than facing outward like he had been to get here.
If he slips…
He’s thinking too much. Atsushi doesn’t even take a deep breath before he pushes himself up, his hands leaving the safe rung for one second, two - before grasping the once-again vertical way to the top.
Perfect.
After that, it’s just a matter of climbing a ladder. It gives his heart time to stop racing, but there’s still relief in his veins like a drug when he reaches the solid highway under his feet, hauling himself over the edge like a drowning man onto the shore.
The red-head, though, is still standing by the edge, dusting off her poofy red pants, tucked into her boots with a whole lot of aesthetic straps that he doesn’t understand. “Surprised you didn’t fall, kitty cat.”
“Kitty cat?”
“You squeaked like a cat when you got startled.”
“I did not -”
“Are you new around here?” she asks, tilting her head; he thinks he can see a speckle of green behind her domino mask. And then, to herself, “Of course you are, no one walks around like that. Are you racing tonight?”
“Thought the racers didn’t go up that way.”
“Not unless they have someone else to bring up their ride,” the girl grins. “The name’s Anne’s Calamity. You?”
“Uh…” Atsushi blinks, and blinks again. You’ll need a name. A name? A name.
His gaze catches on a single can siding abandoned on the side of the highway, white claw on the tin, and the stench of Death still surrounds him in such a haze he can’t think.
“White Reaper,” Atsushi says, finally, tasting the syllables on his tongue.
The girl - Anne’s Calamity, perhaps just Anee - laughs, waving him off. “Oh, I like that. Just like a tiger, huh?”
“Better than a kitty cat,” Atsushi scoffs, crossing his arms with a roll of his eyes.
“I’d love to stay and chat,” she says, but her dismissive tone gives him the impression that she’s being sarcastic. “But I have a race to get to. Bet on me, yeah?”
With that, she takes off, ambling away from the crowd, but Atsushi can only follow her so far before he needs to figure out where the rest of the crowd is going: this is a high-way, after all, though there seems to be no one stupid enough to use it beyond the racers themselves.
The crowd is all gathered about a block down, in a semicircle, surrounding what looks to be a cauldron or several of them. Well, bowl-like objects seem to be the better term for it; one looks like a black cauldron, one seems to be an actual pot, and another is a cheap party bowl. They’re all labeled with duct tape and paint, but Atsushi can’t see the kanji from here.
In the end, he’d love to say he went there of his own accord, but a group ended up surging around him and guiding him there; the set-up is quick in that one minute the highway is empty, and the next, there are orange cones set up ahead of Atsushi and then again, far, far below the peak of the highway’s rise; the starting line is down there, no doubt.
Well, he supposes he’d rather see the end of the race than the start, though he doesn’t know what happens in the first place and he’d prefer to not die to get any view of all.
Where’s Dazai?
Isn’t it nearing two in the morning? Don’t they have work tomorrow? Did Dazai abandon him? Atsushi doesn’t know how to get home from here -
“Careful,” someone whispers over Atsushi’s shoulder, grabbing his wrist when he jumps, instinctively throwing his arm behind him. “Might attract attention you don’t want, kid.”
Dazai.
Atsushi takes his wrist back with a frown, massaging the abused skin. “Where did you go?”
“I was talking to a friend.”
Atsushi narrows his eyes. “A friend, huh? I thought you said -”
“Doesn’t matter what I said,” Dazai waves off easily. “I didn’t think you’d come up to watch the races. You’re braver than I assumed.”
“I thought I was going to die and I wish I hadn’t,” Atsushi says honestly, staying far, far away from the edge of the highway, even if there’s a railing and a raised wall, if only because he didn’t pull himself up here to die from the fall back down. “I don’t know why you brought me out here. I haven’t learned anything.”
“Oh?” Dazai says, his voice rising an octave in lieu of raising a brow from under the masquerade mask. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing of substance,” Atsushi frowns. “It’s late, and I want to go home.”
“Really, I think you should stay to watch the races.”
I can’t get home without Dazai’s help, and Dazai knows that, Atsushi thinks to himself, and he knows he’s right on the money when Dazai doesn’t look the slightest bit concerned about Atsushi taking off.
Beyond that, he isn’t quite sure how to get down the highway beyond walking three miles or going back down the rungs, and he doesn’t want to do either.
“There’s a culture around the circuit,” Dazai continues without prompting. “I think that’s plenty enough learning for your first night, no?”
Atsushi is far less patient when he repeats, “It’s late, and I want to go home. I’m a mechanic. You’re a mechanic. I probably shouldn’t be here. Isn’t this illegal? What happens if someone crashes? Just because you -”
A hand covers his mouth, digging into the skin and leaving nail marks; from this close, their noses almost touching, Atsushi can see something darker lurking in Dazai’s eyes than he’d truly wanted to see. “My identity is something to keep between you and I, don’t you think?”
It isn’t a question, that much is obvious, Dazai’s nails digging in further before the man chooses to release him. “I - I didn’t know it was a secret.”
“And now, you do. Let’s watch the races, shall we?”
When Dazai takes his hand away, Atsushi doesn’t complain again, and the crowd gets rowdy as a pretty woman with a megaphone starts shouting, things Atsushi can barely understand.
“Anne’s Calamity and Tom Sawyer,” Dazai says languidly, slowly, his arm over Atsushi’s shoulder; he doesn’t move when a shiver crawls down Atsushi’s spine. “Should be a good race. Nothing quite like a good race to kick off the night, don’t you think?”
The message is clear: the night has just begun.
Atsushi swallows hard, Dazai’s arm like ice around his neck.