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In a certain point of view, the floors and the walls of this facility could be likened to an intestine without the influence of peristalsis. With its various twists and turns, the much lengthier corridors are seemingly compressed into a maze full of folds where one could simply disappear, absorbed into the rooms filled with acidic rot of those who’ve donned on white coats and the righteousness that comes with the name of ‘research’.
That said, part of this world’s charm is that it houses so many humans, all confident in their own uniqueness, even as they gravitate towards those who share the same views as them, all while persecuting those that they deem different. They’ll beg to differ, questioning the artistry of his point of view.
In the end, they’re all the same once they’ve been ripped open. The same red blood, the same network of capillaries, the same gray matter.
In his years of studying humanity’s insides, he has never encountered anyone truly unique.
Oh, they’d scream and squeal. Oh, they’d claim to be powerful and above begging, but they all become the same once under his scalpel.
Alas, it’s all he could do to install them into artistic displays. Elevating them from commonfolk and into artwork that’d be photographed and discussed by so many others—it’s the least he could do for them, in honor of their sacrifice for his ongoing search for that one unique being.
Such a search has brought him here.
On the outside, it’s all pure white walls and floors. Yokohama Mental Health Institute. A facility that aims to salvage the alarming rise of depressed individuals in the country, instead of simply mourning the aftermath of suicides over failures in university entrance exams and workforce promotions.
Its opening has been attended by various figures that have gone on to win seats in the parliament. Now, the paper trail keeps it on the private sector, but its underbelly is decidedly heavy with fingerprints of government agencies.
What better way to find a pool of participants for human experiments, aside from people who are unable to resist, one way or another?
Right in the center of Suribachi Island, this facility drowns in the blood and sins of its administrators.
Is he here because he wishes to avenge the pitiful souls? Of course not.
He’s here out of mere curiosity. He finds life tedious at best. He wishes he could follow his friend’s dying wish of him saving humanity, but before he could undertake such a gargantuan task, he has to make sure that he’s not doing it for naught. He cannot save a billion people—quantity isn’t automatically better than quality. If he’s to save someone, it must be someone worthy, must be someone unique, must be someone who wouldn’t taint the kind of world that his friend would have wanted.
Alas, there’s only a lot of rot in this world. Every single one of them has varying degrees of decay nestled inside them, something that’s incompatible with the world that his friend once wished for. It’s not his fault, really. It’s not like he’s slacking off in checking them one by one, it’s just a matter of nobody being unique enough to deserve being saved.
Perhaps it’s better to simply lie down and die?
He looks around at the facility’s dreary insides. It doesn’t seem like a nice resting place. Perhaps he could persist a little longer, because it’d be quite ugly to perish in a place like this.
Plus, he has come all the way here because he has heard of a certain information.
His footsteps grow stickier as time passes by. Because humans are startlingly similar with one another, it’s not difficult to predict their actions. Even if his physical prowess cannot be considered as masterful, he’s able to emerge victorious in any encounter he faces, all thanks to his ability to predict their moves.
It’s difficult to shoot accurately in a split-second, but it’s easy to take a shot with seconds to spare, if he knows where his prey would be. It’s difficult to enter the deepest bowels of a high-security hell, but it’s easy to paralyze its entire security system if he knows the logic behind each lock and key.
Soon enough, he’s humming as he waits for the final door to slide open.
Low buzzing from the halogen lighting. Compared to the long journey he’s undertaken to reach this point, the set-up of the last room couldn’t even be considered as a prison cell. It’s simply four walls, a floor and a ceiling.
Slabs of concrete, except for the one glass wall that faces the door from which he emerged from. There’s something that could have been a cement cot before, transformed into a dull red of years of dried blood. There are no other implements or furniture. Not even a hole for ventilation. Nor is there an opening for food or drink to be placed. It’s simply a box to contain that which has been deemed the most catastrophic being in the entire world, the fruit and terror of this facility’s experiments.
Entity A5158, For The Tainted Sorrow.
He can’t quite judge yet if loneliness is something that could be tainted, but he could see that the entirety of the box is tainted by destruction indeed.
“You reek of calamity,” the entity says, looking at him with the blue of the deep seas just before they crush one’s lungs from sheer pressure. The buzzing from the flickering lights is taken over by faint static, as if the syllables have to fight through the fabric of reality to reach his ears. “Are you the one they’ve sent to capture me this time?”
Odd words from an odd creature. He’s clearly already captured, and yet he speaks of being bottled up like some genie forced back into the lamp.
A5158 is purported to be not a true human being anymore, after several thousands of tests and experiments. 5158 being the exact number of those experiments. After which he has gone berserk, destroying several buildings and escaping. And then, inexplicably, as though feeling sorrow over the destruction he has caused, he has retreated back to the cage that once made him suffer.
There are many organizations hunting down this humanoid weapon of mass destruction. He has a bounty in trillions over his tiny head.
“Not at all,” Dazai denies, shaking his head as he adjusts his gloves, somehow kept spotless despite the carnage he’s had to traverse to get here. Most of the blood and guts have splattered over his overcoat, but it’s nothing compared to the state of the room in front of him. “I’m just here for a chat.”
The atmosphere reeks of entrails, a combined effort from both of them. A5158 seems to have destruction as instinct, and so his cell drips with death everywhere. It overshadows the amount of bloodshed that Dazai has brought with him on his trek here.
Even so, it doesn’t stop him from moving forward, until the tip of his nose is pressed against the cold glass.
“You were their biggest success.” He snickers a bit as he looks over at the tiny form of A5158. Back hunched like he would sprout wings if given the chance. Red hair tangled and mottled like the mane of a ferocious beast, long enough like a hungry Rapunzel who’d strangle those that stray near. Eyes glow like a deep-sea fish who could only provide illumination for itself, in a world devoid of the sun’s touch. Limbs dark with a mixture of red-black runes and dirt, like a disgusting little fairy who has bathed himself in tar. Dazai can’t help but think that he’s the brightest, most unique thing he has ever laid eyes upon. “You were considered unretrievable and unstoppable. At least, until you’ve defied expectations by burrowing back to this hole.”
Blue eyes peer at him with so much disinterest that it makes his knees tremble. All of the people around him has always reacted to his looks, one way or another. Whether it’s for people to lavish him with compliments, to recoil with fear, to vow to protect him: there’s always a reaction of some sort.
Right now, A5158’s gaze seems to consider him as something more transparent than air. “Is there a question there somewhere, or are you merely satisfied with hearing yourself talk?”
“Fufufu, it depends.” He meanders a bit, dancing a one-man waltz like he’s inspecting a prospective new home. “Do you like the sound of my voice?”
“It’s grating to the ears. It speaks of calamitous rains upon arid soil.” A smoker’s hoarseness characterizes the other’s voice. That said, what kind of smoke would some catastrophic entity like? It’s probably from the embers of hell licking across his feet whenever he moves.
He tilts his head as he observes the other’s expression. Strangely enough, something tells him that the original human behind this entity is purer and fuller with vitality. After all, doesn’t it always go like that? The ones who are purer become corrupted more beautifully; only those with lofty expectations feel the ache of despair more keenly. “Are you always this poetic to your visitors, or is this privilege exclusively mine?”
For the first time since they’ve met, A5158 lets out humorless laughter. An arm extends towards him, palm up. It’s blotchy with red-black scars that are seemingly etched into his skin. “Come visit me then, instead of staying outside.” A raised brow. “Unless you are capable of feeling fear towards me, despite going all the way here for a chat?”
“Fear is not the proper word for it,” he demurs, his smile stretching his face. “I simply wish to slice you open and study you thoroughly.” Will this entity be the same as others, or will he be the one being that could be considered as unique in this world? With a sigh of a lovelorn schoolgirl’s confession, “I want to see your insides.”
A5158 shakes his head. “You cannot comprehend me.” It rings with a finality. “This entire facility has tried its best to do so, and look where it got them.”
“As my prey?” He noses against the glass, gloved palms caressing the cold material as if he could seek warmth from it. “I’m very capable, you know. They’ve called me a once-in-a-lifetime genius.”
“Human brain is the same gray matter once I’ve cracked your skull open.” A5158 maintains his hunched state, blue eyes kept on him like he couldn’t care less about how he’s practically salivating against this ineffectual cage. “They’ve all wanted to capture me, study me, use me. Not one has survived.”
Is Snow White really that clueless about her stepmother’s malice? Or is she weary of the world, therefore embracing the chance to escape it by biting into that poison apple? Or is she simply too cunning, finding the most logical way of defeating her opponent by manipulating the people around her so that they’d fight for her cause without her lifting a finger?
Is A5158 staying here in order to wait for Prince Charming to come lead him out and deal with those who want to hunt him down? Is A5158 also longing for an escape from this oxidized world? Or is A5158 simply clueless about everyone’s desires to possess him in order to make use of his destructive powers, and has instead done a futile act of saving the world by sequestering himself away?
For the first time in a long time, Dazai is eager to know the answer.
More than the most beautiful way of committing suicide. More than the puzzle that his friend left him, entrusting him with saving humanity when he couldn’t even be sure if he has humanity left in him to begin with.
He wants to know: just how much destruction could the two of them cause?
“Should I consider myself honored? Instead of simply killing me, you even leave me with a cautious warning.” His smile blooms into a crescent moon. “Entity A5158, are you concerned for my safety?”
A5158 starts to unhunch himself from his perch, blue eyes catching some shine from the flickering overhead lights. “I can kill you in 1937 ways without even lifting a finger.” Instead of a threat, it’s a statement of fact. It’s also like a peacock spreading his plumage in front of his eyes, attracting him with various seductive colors.
“You’ve heard of me.” He caresses the glass, tracing the shape of the other’s cheeks, following the line of an autopsy over a still-warm body that reeks of pulsing blood. “You’re waiting for me, believing that someday your prince will come.”
Silence rings between them. It’s not uncomfortable, despite the turbid air, the murky floors, the corrupted world.
Right now, the two of them are here, deep underground in a facility, with darkness cloaking them so thickly that there’s no hope for the sun ever touching them. But it doesn’t matter. In the absence of the sun, there’s a billion other stars in the cosmos. In the absence of the surface-level brightness that the sun could give them, there’s something more brilliant that could descend upon them.
A lightning bolt can be five times hotter than the sun’s surface. That brilliance is enough to form glass from sand; in the same vein, it’s only right that a lightning strike can destroy the glass wall separating them, grinding them back to sand-like dust.
Wings made of black-red lightning unfurl from A5158’s back, the too-high temperature summoning more storm clouds from above, slicing the facility into countless pieces. Thunder simmers around them, and something that could only be called ghostly hellfire licks at the blood. The world cracks around them, moaning in despair as it witnesses the birth of a true catastrophe.
A5158 floats above him, a petite figure who looks larger than life. Red locks whip around in the tempest that forms around them. He’s the brightest star in the calamitous skies.
“With the way I am now, I could inflict nothing but indiscriminate destruction.” The expression in his face colors his words with tainted sorrow, befitting of his codename. “You’re Dazai Osamu, a serial killer who claims that there’s beauty in destruction. I am the slightest bit interested in you.”
For the first time since he has used both his eyes to look at the world, he could finally say that there’s something beautiful in it.
He raises his arms, palms upward like he’s ready to receive a blessing from god, like he’s ready to throw himself into this macabre waltz.
“What a coincidence. I too am interested in the destruction you could weave.”
When their hands meet, it’s to the sound of a thousand lamentations, of the march of a world falling into ruin.
Theirs might be a sun-less world, but it’s now a world for two.
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end