Chapter Text
“Shirase, please-”
“I told you not to say shit about this! You told them, didn’t you?” Shirase’s eyes were wild. He didn’t even look human. “You told my parents. Chuuya, I told you they couldn’t know. You know what they’d do to me. You know what everyone in this goddamn fucking village would do to us if they knew! My parents will tell yours, and then we’re both fucked.”
“I didn’t fucking tell them! Why the fuck would I tell them that?”
“I don’t know, Chuuya, but you’ve always been a spiteful little bitch anyway, so you’d probably do it just to piss me off.”
The words hung in the air for a long moment before the gravity of what he said hit him. “Chuu, I didn’t mean-”
“Yes, you did.” The words cut across the silence almost as sharply as what Shirase had said, and Chuuya’s eyes hardened. “Get out and don’t bother comin’ back.”
“Chuuya, please-”
“Out.” And maybe Shirase really had some sense in him, because he ducked his head, slipping the cloak over his head and disappearing out the back door.
Chuuya’s head was spinning. His hand came up, snaking beneath his shirt to grip at the plain handmade gold band on a chain around his neck, gripping it so tightly he could feel the metal bite into his palm. Crying didn’t even feel like an option right now; breaking down felt impossible. His heart clenched, and so did his palm, the sharp metal biting into his skin deeper the tighter he clenched, leaving a circular bruise on his palm. Suddenly, he was acting, acting without really meaning to, yanking on the chain to break it and stuffing the ring into his pocket.
Shirase had given him that ring with a kiss, promising him that what they had wasn’t a one-off. He had taken it as a promise that they would be together as long as they lived, that Shirase would never leave him.
He didn’t even feel like himself as he watched his hands pack a bag, filling it with a loaf of bread, some cheese, a knife and a trowel. He slung the bag over his shoulder. The last thing he did was pull on his good boots, the ones that had been well oiled to keep out water and dirt, and drape his favorite coat over his shoulders.
In some sad way, he felt obligated to turn around, looking at the small cottage where he lived for a long second, taking it in. If he was going to go to that place his grandmother had shown him before she passed, he was going to be the farthest from home he had ever been in his life. The thought filled him with a blossoming anxiety, but also a resolute sort of firmness. He gave a single nod, before turning away and starting on his way to the place that had been a constant in his childhood.
His grandmother had taken him to a willow tree since he could walk. The willow towered with his weeping leaves, engulfing him beneath its embrace, inspiring an irreplaceable feeling in him. It was a sort of peace, a feeling of being at home in the world, a feeling of safety and calm nothing could replicate.
He had climbed that tree countless times in his childhood, clambering his way up the branches as his grandmother laughed and warned him to be careful. He remembered only thinking about seeing the world from up so high, wondering if he could see the village where they lived from the top branches of the tree. The exhilaration of being at the top of the tree was hard to forget.
It was an entire day’s walk away, but those days were his favorite days when he was a child.
It was only fitting that the only evidence of their love was buried underneath the tree he had loved when he was young.
The cottage grew smaller and smaller, then disappeared entirely as he took a left turn. He knew the path to the willow beneath his feet as intimately as… well, the way he had known Shirase, or at least the way he thought he knew him.
The path didn’t throw him off for a second as he walked through the woods, stepping over fallen branches and logs. The trail was almost a second home to him, and he felt himself relax more and more the deeper and deeper he walked into the woods.
When he finally arrived at the willow, the sun was setting on the horizon. His feet were weary, and he had walked all night, only stopping to have a couple bites of bread and cheese.
But when he finally reached the tree, his eyes lit up. It was just the way he remembered, and as he approached it and lay a hand against the trunk, feeling the wood, it almost seemed to hum under his fingers with life. He was so caught up in the moment; he had almost forgotten what he was there for.
Almost.
His hand slipped into his pocket, rubbing the ring between his finger and thumb, before kneeling on the dirt on one knee, fishing the trowel out of his bag and digging. Anyone else finding this ring was a thought he couldn’t stand, and so he dug deeper than he needed to, elbow deep in the dirt.
He pulled back for a long second, breathing shallowly as he pulled out the ring. It shone in the light, almost the same way as the day Shirase gave it to him. Seeing it shine in the light made his heart twist, and he dropped to his heels, laying his forearm against the ground and pressing his forehead to a root of the tree.
Before he realized it, a tear was trickling down his cheek. Then another, then another followed, and then suddenly he was sobbing, on his knees before the willow tree. Bugs creeped and crawled all over his forearm, but he didn’t care as tears dripped down his cheeks and onto the dirt, soaking into the earth not even a second after they had fallen. Chuuya didn’t know how long he spent on his knees like that, heartbroken and alone, but when he finally straightened up, his eyes were red and his breath was shaky.
He sniffled, wiping away his tears with the back of his hand before taking his trowel out of his bag and beginning to dig. It felt as if the dirt had been loosened as he dug, deeper and deeper until he was almost elbow deep in the dirt. Just when he was about to stop digging and drop the ring in, it felt almost as if he hit some kind of fabric, and upon closer inspection, he noticed a glint of red on the edge of his trowel. He stared at it for a long second before he dug even deeper - he could already see the red staining the dirt as he dug.
An arm reached out of the dirt, digging its nails into the ground beside the hole. The skin was pale and stained with clay, a long bloody scratch along the side of his bandaged arm, and he stared at it for a long second before gently touching the arm’s fingers with the tips of his fingers.
Things like this were not uncommon in his village. There were people who practiced witchcraft and talked to the dead, and so the way the hand reached out of the dirt was not unfamiliar to him.
What did shock him though was the voice that sounded, muffled under the ground.
Chuuya scrambled back, heart racing as a chill ran through his blood.
“What the fuck?”
He got his answer quickly enough, though, because a form slowly rose, breaking through the dirt. Chuuya’s eyes widened as a man broke through, almost as if he had been buried. “I was sleeping. Someone woke me up.”
“You were- huh?”
“I was sleeping. And rather peacefully at that before you interfered.”
Chuuya had to stare. “Sleeping?” ‘In the dirt’ was implied, but Dazai didn’t seem to pick it up as he crossed his arms.
“Yes, sleeping. I’ve been sleeping for a hundred years now-” Chuuya thought to himself that that was probably called death , “and if you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to that.”
“Who in their right mind would want to be dead?” Chuuya said before he could stop himself, jaw hanging open slightly. “Why would you want to be dead when you could be alive?”
Dazai gave him a blank stare. “First, I wasn’t dead, I was sleeping. There’s an enormous difference. Get it right, chibi.” Chuuya nearly interrupted, but Dazai held up a hand, silently telling him to let him finish. “Second, death isn’t so bad, and honestly, if it was half as good as that nap, I would be dead right this second.”
Chuuya just stared.
“Now, I don’t know what you’re here for, but I would really like it if you left me alone so I could go back to sleep.” Dazai stared back, just as balefully and almost twice as annoyed.
“I’m here to bury something.” Chuuya set his jaw. “It’s important and I need it gone.”
“That’s a deep hole,” Dazai commented. “It must be something big.”
“It’s none of your fucking business, that’s what it is,” Chuuya snapped. Dazai tried to hold back a laugh, but failed miserably, as expected.
“It’s hard to take you seriously when you’re so tiny. Seriously, how tall are you?”
“None of your fucking business,” Chuuya repeated, picking up the trowel he had dropped and moving away before Dazai reached for him and pinched the hem of his pants, stopping him from taking another step. He wheeled around, annoyed, but what came out of his lips wasn’t what he expected.
“Why do you want to be dead, or asleep, or whatever, so badly?”
Dazai gave a slight smile. “Let’s just say I have my reasons. Now, go away so I can go back to sleep and have a very peaceful rest where there are no small men who can annoy me half to death anymore.”
Chuuya huffed. “Fine.” He pushed himself to his feet as Dazai lay back down in the newly created hole. “And I have a name, you know. It’s Chuuya.”
“I really couldn’t care less,” said the slightly muffled voice. “And mine is Dazai. Osamu Dazai.”
“That’s a dumber name than I-” Chuuya started, but stopped when he noticed Dazai was already asleep again, and he huffed again and packed his things, including the ring that had been discarded on the ground. There was no way he could make it back home in time for the morning, so he stumbled his way through the darkness over roots and fallen branches to find a place to sleep for the night.