Archive of Our Own

They’ve met a thousand times and they will meet a thousand times more. Dazai doesn’t really fear her, not in this world. After all, Fyodor has no ability in this place, only a raw intellect that allows her to bump into him on the street leading to a long string of unraveling threads as Fyodor carefully dug her fingers into the tapestry that was this world and left it as a pile of wires. 

“So what is your plan?” Fyodor asks him as he walks through the hallway leading to the stage. He looks at her, and then gestures to himself, fitted in full gear. He wears the main character’s long cloak and hat, holding their staff in one hand and a playbill in the other. He looks like a superfan. 

Dazai was a superfan, he loved this play before it was even a thought in the author’s head. In a way, he could be called its muse, for it was him that gave Odasaku the idea. He dropped the napkin on his cafe table years and years ago, just to sit back and watch the idea grow and grow. Dazai was careful, ever so careful, always so careful. He had been watching Odasaku for years but only allowed himself a single moment of contact. 

Sometimes, he lingers. Never for long, maybe for a short conversation or a stranger giving away a sweet. He never gives out his name. Dazai is endlessly patient (he is not, but he has forever to learn how to be). 

This time, Dazai did not linger and Odasaku took his idea. He took Dazai’s idea and it grew wings and roots and tails and branches until it was a whole forest. And then that metaphor became real, the sets were built and a stageplay was written. A play about a man lost in the woods—and that was all Dazai knew of it. The outfit was from the poster, Odasaku was very private when it came to social media. He always was, even when he was an idol. 

Odasaku had people to talk to, and those people weren’t one of the millions of things that lingered on the internet with their nothing bodies and lighthouse eyes. Those people he could talk to where always right next to him, an arm’s length away. 

Fyodor’s lips do not purse, she’s far too put together for that. After all, she’s not a normal manor given the grace to act like one. Not anymore at least, their world is much too small for that. Instead she folds her hands over the pocket purse she’s holding, pressing it against her floor-length black dress. 

“That is not your plan.”

“It is.” Dazai replies and he fights the urge to dance on the balls of his feet, to jump and twirl to scream and cry with joy, “Don’t you want to see what he would make, Fyodor?” 

He doesn’t call her his friend, or cute, or even formally. They’re beyond that, and besides, it doesn’t matter. Not really, not at all. 

The crowd moves around them, some people jostle Dazai and hiss at him for being a rock in the river but Dazai doesn’t pay them any mind. He simply tilts his head and smiles at Fyodor before saying, “Do you want to be in the seat next to me?”

The play is beautiful, it brings him to tears. He sobs in the front row, head buried in his hands as everyone around him stares. A few people clap, joining in on the standing ovation but in a several meter circle around him, people simply just stare. Dazai can’t blame them, they’re empty. If he blew into their mouths, it would echo. 

Fyodor looks at him like all the rest, but if he did the same to her, then she wouldn’t just stare at him. Wouldn’t kiss him back either, blowing into someone’s mouth was more of a CPR tactic than a flirting one. She turns her head but instead of staring in derision, she tears the front page off her playbook and puts it to his eyes. 

The picture is of the playwright, Oda Sakunosuke, is quickly covered with snot and tears. 

Dazai leaves his eyes on Odasaku as he weeps, even though he can barely see with his eyes so close to the wrinkled photo. He’s stared at it a thousand times before, it is seared to the back of his eyelids, replacing the scene of Odasaku sitting in that cafe years and years ago, staring at the back of that napkin. 

(He remembers it as if it were yesterday because none of the rest of his life matters. It was a morning in spring, water dripped down from the awning and down the back of Dazai’s beige coat. He chose beige for that moment. Dazai knows beige is a color that means nothing to Oda in any world but he can’t stop hoping. 

After all, isn’t this world made of hope?

The outdoor dining was right next to the road, it was rush hour so Dazai was having a hard time hearing Odasaku’s order. He didn’t need to—staying out of sight was much more important. Dazai wanted to make an impression by stroking his finger across the thread that was Odasaku’s life. He wanted to change him forever in just a single meeting. Dazai didn’t want to just be a tumbleweed in the breeze, he didn’t want to be just someone arrested in the same venue. 

He wants to grasp Odasaku in his hands and mold his life like clay. He wants to twist him backwards around his finger. He wants to stick his hands into the holes in him and use him like a puppet. Dazai wants to light himself aflame with the bottle of oil Oda keeps too close to the stove and burn to cinders.

Odasaku had ordered a simple pastry that was obscured by the large fern Dazai drove behind after dropping off the napkin, the mist shimmered in the air. There was a shine after partially reading the note, Dazai saw his eyes shimmering as he glanced around, searching for the man he did not know was him before his eyes fell back to the paper and devoured it. 

Does he know—will he ever know—)

Dazai is distracted once more, he’s lost all over again. He’s always lost now, he’s been lost for as long as he cares to remember. He’s lost but he has found someone to watch and someone has found that type of person in him as well. 

He sniffles, rubs his face with his arm and rises to his feet to join the ovation. 

The crowd smooths out, like a stone has been taken out of a creek. The beaver watches him with purple eyes and her long-form plans. He smiles at her and pretends that his stone isn’t teetering on the button for a bulldozer. 

The cast comes out on stage, hand in hand. Many of them are faces that he knows. There’s the Tanizakis in the main role, there’s Yosano as the mystical loner, there’s some Flag he’s forgotten playing a background character in a play where every person is important. It’s a story about how every single person matters, about how in life it’s impossible to have a person left behind. 

Dazai waits until Odasaku is on stage, not for anything in particular but he waits until Odasaku in on the stage. He stands by the side, barely out of the curtains. He’s a playwright in a time hundreds of years past Shakespeare and dozens of years into modern theater he doesn’t take center stage. 

The director is no one to him, just a empty point in space where void grows and spills and disappears. 

Dazai reaches under his seat and wraps his hands around the handle.

Handle?

What does one call the end of a bouquet of flowers that you grab? Is it a handle? Dazai doesn’t care to know.

“It’s the stem.” Fyodor tells him as Dazai straightens. The looks that he gives her has melted lesser men but she doesn’t even pull her high collar. Her skin is smooth, unworried. That was him, it was he who made sure that even she had a good life this time. 

Dazai turns away and throws the bouquet—by the stem—and throws them to the back side of the stage. It’s a bright bouquet, yellow and red and purple and a second shade of people. Camellias and carnations and gardenia and hydrangeas. Longing and love and secret admiration and pride and pride and pride. There are not enough words in any language to describe what Dazai feels for Odasaku but the flowers are close enough. A bit too romantic for his tastes, but he is tinged with a bit of romance. He is a soft pink besides Fyodor’s inky purple. 

Odasaku catches the flowers and then begins coughing. 

Red reality spills out of his mouth. The world bends around him, the cast and crew surround him in moments, hands covering Oda but Dazai can still see him clearly. The playwright dressed in pure black covers his mouth with his hands but even his eyes, wide with terror, have blood around them. 

The bouquet falls to the floor and Dazai stumbles forward. 

He’s allergic to flowers? Why? How? Which flower what did it? Dazai grinds his teeth into dust, turning the playbill into paste in his hands. What fucking flower did it?

(It was the carnations, of course, but Dazai wasn’t here because the obvious answer was the right one to him. The flower of love and fascination may not have thorns but it’s grown so wild that it loops around Dazai’s throat ten times over and has so many petals that it chokes everyone in the world.)

Odasaku coughs once more, red ribbons spilling out from his mouth. They fall onto the ground and burn a hole through the floor as security takes Dazai by his limbs and drags him away. He smoulders and simmers and he is sparks bright in the air. The doors to the auditorium slam shut just as Odasaku falls to the floor. 

Dazai is a fire with handcuffs, he wants this entire place turned to dust. The officers keep asking him if he knew that Odasaku was allergic to flowers, or which flower was the one that caused the allergic reaction. They try to keep it hidden, but it’s obvious that Odasaku didn’t survive their second encounter. 

They ask him about his search history and his habits, they wonder about his schedule and his life, they agonize about his occupation and lack of connections. 

‘It’s almost like this dude like, lived for Oda Sakunosuke even though they, ya know, never met?’ 

Dazai despairs for the literacy in this world that he’s created. 

He closes his eyes as the threads of this world begin to dissolve. 

When he opens his eyes, Fyodor is there with a pair of garden shears. She is bare, the garden shears disappear in an instant when faced with a lack of reality. 

She is not prepared for Dazai’s attack. Fyodor never is, that’s how the cycle continues over and over again. 

Dazai sits beside her cooling body, not waiting as void bleeds out of her eyes. It doesn’t pool on the ground, there’s not any ground here. There’s no any gravity so Dazai doesn’t know how he’s managing to lean on Fyodor’s body but that’s no concern of his right now. 

“What do you think, Fedya?” Dazai asks him as he licks his thumb and turns the Book to a new page. Then the next because that page is full. Every inch of the paper is covered in story after story, world after world, mistake after mistake. The first few pages are filled with larger writing, but by page five each character is the size of Dazai’s metaphorical fingernails. 

“Maybe I should give us magic next time…giving you some power might be good. But not too much.” He fondly, “You mess with my plans too much when you have too much power.” Fyodor, of course, doesn’t respond, “I think I’ll be nice to you again. 

“After all,” Dazai says, using his fingers to force his face into a smile before splitting his skin and pouring it on the page. He uses his nail to write out the characters, “This is fun, right?”

There are a lot of conversation that Dazai would have wanted to be a fly on the wall for, but he’ll take a raven in the window. A raven didn’t attract much attention at all, and they could be easily confused as a wandering familiar with a corpse for a owner. 

It got him a lot of good knowledge (of magic and prophecies, the second of which is far more confusing)  and head scratches (always nice). And a nice large chest to lie on, as he’s doing right now. 

Dazai lets out a sleepy murmur as the spring sunlight drifts in through the blinds. Odasaku scritches his head and goes back to stirring the soup that was the household's breakfast. Dazai lets out a coarse croak (the sound that ravens make, who, unlike crows, do not caw…Dazai had intended to keep his presence a secret but it seems like Odasaku knew corvids better than he did) and ruffles his feathers. 

“Don’t move too much.” Oda tells him, stroking his head once more, “If you ruin the soup again, then Sakura gets to dress you up again. And unless you like more golem outfits, I recommend that you behave yourself.”

Dazai lets out a low croak in agreement, ignoring the irritation prickling under his feathers, like aphids under a leaf. He hadn’t just been making sound for the sake of it, Odasaku was being watched but was completely unaware of it. Dazai kept on seeing shadows curls around the edges of his windows, eyes peering out of mirrors at least a meter over Odasaku’s head. He didn’t know who it was, or how they were doing it, but something had its eye on the little witch’s cottage by the river. 

Odasaku was a strong witch, in this world he was a person capable of taking care of himself. This wasn’t a world where little girls just faked at creating potions, in this world it wasn’t uncommon for a young girl to dye their rooms using their first potions. Odasaku was one of the best, a witch from the line of no one important, who went to magic school and excelled. 

He graduated the top of his class, neither a lady nor a warlock, but a witch through and through. A witch with a large enough chest to comfortably fit a raven (and enough kids to age Dazai a good decade in the few months he’s been here for). Dazai was born on a breeze and settled in this home, and was mostly content to breath in its stagnant air and play around in the garden of a thousand flowers. He likes the carnations the most. 

Dazai closes one eye and uses the open one to glare at the corner where he swears he just saw a hint of teeth. It disappears as Odasaku turns. 

Dazai closes his other eye and rests. 

“You’ve been more tired these days, Raven.” Odasaku says because Dazai hasn’t revealed his name yet, “If something was wrong, you would tell me right?”

And in this small kitchen with dozens of pots and pans on the walls, where a single roaring fireplace is used for a food cauldron and a potion cauldron and dozens of spice containers line the walls, where there’s a perch on the wall just for him, where there’s a huge bag of rice in just the right place for Dazai to slip off his perch and fall right into. In this small kitchen which has Dazai’s heart in the walls, where the walkways have been replaced by atriums and the doorways with valves. 

In this small cottage where five small children live—but that’s nowhere near as important as the one large witch that lives with them. In this small cottage where the man he loves is—loves in which way Dazai does not know anymore. 

In this small place, all Dazai knows is love. 

In this small place, Dazai lies and nods his feathered head. 

This world is one of the slower ones, but Dazai wanted to give himself some time. If the entire world was spent saving Odasaku, then firstly, that would be no fun! And then Dazai would forget who Odasaku was if he didn’t have moments like this. 

Dazai presses his head against the beauty mark on Odasaku’s breast and fakes a sleepy croak. The window outside the sitting room shows a cold darkness. Winter has taken hold of this world now, turning day into night far earlier than he would want. Brighter days are better. However, Odasaku has taken to charming a mushroom to make it glow and then wrapping it around Dazai’s neck. He loves his glowing talisman, he truly does.

“Odasaku! Odasaku!” A child says, running around in circles and holding a potion over his head, “I want to grow taller! I want to grow taller right now!” 

“That won’t make you taller. It’ll only make you bigger. Put it down.” Odasaku says, stroking Dazai’s feathered spine, “And we’d have to cook you to make it stick. Are you a human or a carrot?”

“A human, but—” The child begins before a knock on the door interrupts him. 

“No. Remember, the most direct magic is not only the most likely to go wrong but also the most obvious.” Odasaku says as he shifts Dazai to the crook of his elbow and stands up, “Now go back to your room. Ango’s here and I thought you promised him that you’d work on your reading.” 

The child eeps before running off, deeper into their home. Odasaku takes the other direction out of the room, walking towards the door while Dazai smooths his feathers.

He’s never liked Ango’s weekly visits, but he understands that the two men are very close friends in this world. It was completely unintended, but long past were the worlds where he tries to write in too much detail. The book is omnipotent but not unlimited. Dazai can fill in the cracks between worlds himself—but Ango and Odasaku being childhood best friends in a way that the first world would call homoerotic wasn’t something he expected in the least. 

“I’ve begun dreaming of you while I’m awake.” Ango tells him in lieu of hello.

“They’re working you too hard.” Odasaku says in turn, “They’re even sending the rookie knights over?”

“You’re quite the teacher, Odasaku.” Ango says but it fades into the background as Dazai sees teeth in a corner. Not just teeth an entire mouth, at least as long as he is, with human-like teeth the size of his beak. Dazai dashes at the monster, throwing Odasaku’s hand off as he shoots at the dark corner. Of course, by the time he gets there, nothing but Odasaku’s worry and apologies to his four guests. It’s fine. He’ll take the humiliation if he’s able to push whatever it (or they) might be back just a bit longer. Dazai has refused to let anyone into the study for the last week due to the frequency of parts appearing in there. 

“Something’s gotten into him recently…I mean the last few months.” Odasaku corrects himself as he strokes Dazai’s bristling feathers, “I know familiars can have hallucinations but this seems to go a step beyond that.”

“Familiars can be just as complicated as humans.” Akutagawa, the Monster Knight, says, “Rashomon can have every problem a human does. I know that she sometimes has nightmares completely independently of me.”

“Oh does she have nightmares.” Nakajima (well, Atsushi, but he does by his given name less commonly in this world), the Beast Knight says before getting a fierce glare from Akutagawa. Dazai would inspect them closer if Odasaku hadn’t turned him to the third and smallest knight of the bunch, who is staring at him with wide, shimmering eyes. 

“Do you want to hold him?” Odasaku asks.

Kyouka, the Title Still Pending Knight (Bunny Knight wasn’t accepted), nods and reaches out of her hands. Odasaku hands him over before Dazai can protest. She clasps her hands around his wings and holds him close to her chest. She’s much stronger than she looks, or else raven’s just aren’t meant for full-strength hugs and he’s grown too used to Odasaku’s proper handling. 

“Please hold him with less force.” Odasaku tells her but his attention is quickly snatched away by Ango. Thankfully, she does loosen his grip on him and Dazai is allowed to breath freely once more. 

“I know I’ve brought them by on short notice, Odasaku, but I hope I’ve given you enough information to understand them and help…help them learn as much as they can.”

“I should know more than enough to help.” Odasaku replies, “Would anyone want some tea?”

Atsushi opens his mouth to ask, but Ango cuts him off, “No, no thank you. Let’s stay together for a bit longer, shall we? How are the children’s studies going?” Ango asks kindly but Dazai watches him clasp his hands together, uncut fingernails digging into the backs of his hands before he goes for a new ring on his middle finger and twists it.

“Fine enough,” Odasaku lies. The children all hate studying unless Oda or Dazai are going something to make it fun for them. Something that lasted across all of time and space, Dazai presumes, “They’re all studying right now, in the bedroom, Dazai has refused to let anyone in the—Ango, what’s gone wrong?” Odasaku asks because Ango’s suddenly gone completely pale.

“I’m—I’m so sorry—” Ango begins the moment before the screaming starts. Dazai freezes, ice going down to the tips of his feathers as the children scream. Odasaku and the knights move faster than he do, rising to their feet. The knights all start yelling, coordinating their next move with each other. Dazai is basically tossed to the side but before he can fully register the pain the screaming stops. 

Just like that. 

The knights don’t waste a second before rushing out of the room for the bedroom. Odasaku only lingers for a moment, casting an unreadable look back at Ango who has nearly collapsed on his chair. Dazai croaks at him and spurs him to motion, stabbing the government worker with his bill until he’s following the rest of the procession. 

What they find is a room covered wall to wall in splinters and gore. It looks as if the entire room has been chewed up by a monster, leaving nothing behind. He can see the study books, but only barely. They’ve been mashed into a red paste, and are nearly impossible to separate from entrails. 

“What…What’s happened?” Atsushi asks, breaking through the silence that hung heavy on the room. It snaps like a wire as he turns on his heel, eyes flowing gold as he takes a step toward Ango. There’s no need, Rashomon is already there, the full force of her blazing red eyes directed at Ango and solely him, “What did you do?”

“I—It—” Ango begins over and over again. 

Odasaku is stock still. He also glares at Ango but he doesn’t move against his oldest friend. Not yet. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be them.” Ango says slowly, “The spell was intended to target the room with the most people, and take out the targets.” He takes a step as the knights all take a step forward. Dazai blocks him from the other side, releasing a loud screech that has Ango stumbling closer to the blades. 

“The targets, of course, being the three people you brought with you today.” Odasaku says. Rage makes his voice quiver, “A spell which, if I’m right, has been in place for months and whose preparations are undetectable to humans?” Odasaku says, coming to the same conclusion Dazai had. His voices wavers more and more with every word until he’s swallowing between every word, visibly holding back vomit.

“Why?” Kyouka asks, sword out and held to Ango’s throat. 

“Because it seemed like the best option.” A voice says from the next room over. 

And then the teeth descend from the walls and the screaming starts again. 

There’s teeth in his legs, turning them to a bloody and boney paste. There’s teeth in his stomach, gnawing and chewing and splitting his small body in half. There’s teeth in his throat, not ripping or tearing, just leering at him. 

He cannot see anymore. The screams are too loud, the pain is too much, Odasaku is dying and there is nothing he can do as death tears them apart—

When he opens his eyes, there’s a warlock looking down at him, purple eyes peering down at him but lacking any confusion. 

“This keeps on failing.” Fyodor says as reality starts to fall apart in ribbons, roses unpooling from the nine-body-thick viscera on the walls, “Yet you keep on trying.”

She doesn’t expect him to tear out her throat, but in her defense, he was only a raven for as long as she knew of him.

Dazai takes a sip of his drink, savoring the strong whiskey as she comes to sit beside him. There isn’t much space in the small bar, made smaller by the way it was shifted and shortened to make space for the rudimentary boxing ring that took up the place used for dancing five nights of the week. Things were just getting started now, the boxers were starting to get undressed and wrap themselves in bandages. 

He had had a few people come up to him and ask if he was joining in at first, only to soon become known as the man with decorative bandages. Dazai didn’t want to be known for much more, so he made sure to idly chat with the other patrols and keep them vaguely entertained with his existence. 

She is new, Dazai knows this corner of the world well enough so recognize a ripple on the surface when he sees one. Besides, it’s her. He’d always recognize her, even if he fucked up and made her a worm (whoops). 

“Are you new here?” He asks her as she settles down beside him, dressed in black baggy clothing to hide her figure. It makes it easier to run from watching eyes if you know that your ceiling won’t turn into an iris the moment you walk into your home. 

“Yes.” She tells him as she unzips her hoodie to reveal the plain t-shirt underneath, “My friend and I just heard of this place a few days and decided to check it out.” She smiles at him and he wonders just how many layers of acting she is wearing. Not for a second does he believe that she’s told him the full truth. 

Ah well, they have time in this world. Odasaku isn’t even here tonight, due to a sudden outbreak of stomach flu in his home. It’s nothing major, Dazai went by to check and found nothing out of order yet. 

“Is your friend fighting?”

“Nikolai is over—” She starts but doesn’t have the chance to finish before the crowd starts cheering, the first fight already in progress. Dazai takes a sip from his drink and tilts it her direction, an offering that she doesn’t pretend to be even interested by. He doesn’t know why—this is a Fyodor, not his. Maybe not yet, maybe not ever. She is his first priority now because Odasaku is not here and she could ruin everything if she’s given the knowledge to how. 

So he turns his drink back toward him with a smile and takes another long sip. A punch is thrown and spittle flies onto the mat but that’s not what her eyes on as Dazai swallows again and again and again. She looks at him like he’s beautiful. He has never thought himself as such, but it’s nice to know that she thinks that of him again and again and again. 

“I could order you something.” Dazai asks but the words are lost to the crowd. 

So instead, he leaves his hand—palm up, fingers relaxed—on the countertop and turns to the ring. A boxer is switching out, via someone dragging their unconscious body by the feet. The first round was quick, a one punch knockout that had a third of the crowd groaning and the smart part of the crowd leering at the people either dumb enough or new enough to bet against Chuuya. 

Chuuya isn’t even sweating, he turns back to his partner and Akutagawa gives him a flat look. Chuuya says something unheard but its clearly You’re not doing to wipe me down? 

Akutagawa replies I will when they actually get a hit on you. 

So you’re saying that I should hold back a bit? Chuuya leans back, pulling his arm around his lover’s shoulders and pulling him closer. Maybe I need a kiss to entice me?

You’ll have one when you get yourself some lipstick. Akutagawa replies, unhooking Chuuya’s fingers from the shoulder of his binder and turning his head to the man getting into the ring, Oh look, a tube of it is on its way. 

Fyodor’s hand goes on top of his. 

Go get him. Ryuunosuke tucks his hair behind his ear and giving Chuuya a sultry look before he pushes Chuuya off the wires that act as ropes, placing his hands on Chuuya’s shoulders as his lover’s attention turns to his opponent. 

He called Chuuya a dog once, centuries ago. Maybe he was correct, he can barely remember and it barely matters anymore. He does attack like one though, or perhaps a wolf would be a better descriptor of the rare strength and tempered power—

“So you know them?”

“Him.” Dazai explains because Chuuya doesn’t care to make it easy to know. Neither does Akutagawa but Dazai knows that some things tend to remain constants across all worlds, “And no, I don’t.” He lies but not quite. He misses Chuuya’s next punch when he feels Fyodor’s nails graze his wrists. 

They’re short and well-trimmed, a rarity in this world. This one is more rough at the edges, the government more oppressive, the places for one to have an orphanage few. It leaves more people in smaller communities and less wiggle room for things to go wrong. The worlds keep on getting tighter and tighter but Dazai can’t put Odasaku in a box. That’s not safety. 

At least, not a safety he subscribes to. 

She looks at him and Dazai knows that he’s been caught in a half-lie. However, they’ve just met so what does it matter if he lies a little. It could always be construed as trying to keep Fyodor’s full attention. He wonders if it is. 

It’s been a while since he’s had a first meeting.

This Fyodor asks him, “Are you sure?”

“I know them from a distance.” Dazai says and that is the a full truth. Fyodor uses her other hand to cradle her head and pulls him closer. He shouldn’t glance at her lips, but he does. He sees them start to move up into a smirk before he looks away. 

“How far?” She asks but that is a lie. 

First meetings don’t go like that, you don’t reach into a man’s chest and play his heartstrings like a cello from the first meeting. Give it a few meetings—or it can be done in the cold night air after sex and their frenzied actions had stilled and their body heat was back to normal levels. Then you can crack open a man’s ribcage and play plinko. 

“That’s nice.” Fyodor tells him, pulling Dazai closer so he could lean his head on her shoulder. He flushes. Intensely. So intensely that he feels like a human, going so red because he had a pretty man’s attention. Like a schoolchild but he hasn’t been that in so long, “How willing are you to get to know me better? Or following your words, getting closer to me?”

“Of course.” Dazai tells him, head on her shoulder and her hand in his, “But give me a while before we leave. After all, I don’t know your name.”

“Knowing my name won’t help you.” Fyodor says, stroking his face with the back of her knuckles, “You’re already falling apart.”

“At least allow me the chance to tape up my pride.” Dazai replies. He misses the end of the fight as he gazes at her and tries to nail down his longing. It has four limbs that he can staple to four wooden beams. He misses the way the other man falls to the ground, unconscious while Chuuya stands victorious. 

(Chuuya steps back but it’s more of a stumble, his legs growing weaker as the adrenaline rush dies down. They’re both covered in blood splatters but Nakamura more than him. Good, the fucker broke the rules. Chuuya doesn’t like wearing makeup but he’ll bare it to cover up the black eye he can feel forming. He paid Nakamura back—there’s a tooth lying on the mat. 

“Chuuya.” Ryuunosuke says, not calling out for him because he doesn’t need to. His voice a cocktail, sweet with an undercurrent that is an icepick to the spine. Chuuya stumbles over to his lover on the other side of the ropes, aware but uncaring of the mix of sweat, spittle, and blood that runs down his skin. 

“I’ve got you your lipgloss.” Chuuya tells him as Ryuunosuke grabs his face. His lover’s mouth goes to his breast, gathering up the blood there before he presses his lips against Chuuya’s.)

Fyodor takes him home—for the sake of his pride it’s after he’s bought her a few more drinks and gotten to do his job as the handsome guide. After a few hours he feels less like a fly that’s been stuck in a web for hours and more like a lizard that’s going to come in and steal what’s left uneaten. 

Still, he lets her lead him to his home, her close her bedroom door and rip out his heart. 

Okay that’s a lie!

He’d never let her kill him, there’s something far more important for the both of them that he has to make sure stays alive. So he lets her take him to her bedroom and take him apart. He gets on his back for her and then her hips and then on his hands and knees and is glad to pretend that he isn’t just drunk on her. That the taste of her fingers in his mouth wasn’t stronger than moonshine. 

Dazai has sex with her and hopes that she’s too entranced with him to notice that the skyscrapers in the distance aren’t just degrading, that they’re badly scribbled in. He turns his neck and lets her suck hickies onto his neck—cups her breasts in his hands—feverishly presses their lips together—and all the while hopes that she doesn’t realize that he feels real in a way few people does. 

He doesn’t entertain the idea of letting Fyodor know what is happening. Only once was enough. 

Though by the end, he’s unable to do much but lay there, completely spent and satisfied in a way that would leave him well off for at least a week if he wasn’t basically the god of this half-baked world and didn’t have to check up on his singular believer. 

Dazai tells her before he goes but her purple eye sees much more than she should. 

Dazai brushes it off as he leaves her home on the outskirts, idly scratching the words under his bandages. He knows she watched him walk down the street, he felt her gaze cattle prodded onto his back. Though that doesn’t matter now because when he peers into the crumbling home on the inky gray waterside he finds it empty. 

There are boards over the doors and a single piece of paper that reads CONTAMINATED. Dazai sees the ink bleed down from the boards, watches it for a few moments before he tears them to pieces. Blood spills down his hands and he curses himself for making a world like this. If he manages to save Odasaku once more then he’ll tear this government apart. He thought that such an oppressive system would be able to make Odasaku keep his head down and his family safe but all it lead to was sudden misfortune. 

There is a lesson to be learned here, but Dazai refuses to learn it. 

He does not save Odasaku this time. 

Fyodor comes with a gun, the bullet disappears as she shoots it, then the machine turns to confetti in her hands and Dazai gives her a gentler death this time. 

“This would be much easier if I could trust you.” Dazai tells her, “If only.” He says, using his blood to write on the pages, “But oh well! We try again!” He chirps as his rotten soul flakes even more.

Dazai watches them dance.

A mastermind and her assassin, hand in hand, Odasaku’s hand on her shoulder, Fyodor’s hand on his hip. The centers of the ball, the crown jewels for a tiara. In half an hour this entire building was going to be dust. 

Dazai, the hapless fool desperately in love with the evil mastermind, playing the role of the viciously smart trophy husband of the mastermind, has told her a hundred times over, but alas, the trophy husband has had the plan explained to them a thousand times over. She assumes that just because she can mold people under her fingers that the same can work for all of reality. After all, isn’t all life science and nature? False: all life is science and nature and a deep, all consuming hatred for Odasaku. 

Dazai squashes an errant fly under his finger. 

The song ends and the next one begins but it seems like Odasaku is out of patience with her and bows quickly before walking off into the crowd. A few people recoil, newcomers obviously because the scar over Odasaku’s eye is scary for only one second before he informs you that he got it from running too fast as a young child and charging face-first into a pole. 

“Ready for a dance, dear?” Fyodor asks, reaching out her hand. Once, she had told him that he was always looking in the distance, to something she couldn’t see. Once, he’d joked that he was looking at the threads of reality. Once, she told him that it couldn’t be it because she could see those and Dazai wasn’t looking at them. 

It’s taken hundreds of years for him to dare to be so close. 

She wasn’t like Ranpo, who he could easily carve out one small corner of the world for and then leave him there content. Ranpo wasn’t a wild card as she, he wouldn’t blow up the world just to find what particles were in the dust. He could create a world to keep Ranpo happy and trust that Ranpo wouldn’t destroy what he had so carefully made and Ranpo placed enough trust in him to let Dazai do what he wanted. 

He could only change the world, he couldn’t take Ranpo’s intelligence away from him, nor could he take Fyodor’s gentle cruelty. 

Though he couldn’t take away his own traits, except for the ones that made this cycle necessary, so he guess things are consistent. 

“Please, my love.” Dazai says, taking her hand and letting her pull him onto the marble dance floor. The ends of her red nails prick the underside of his wrist, right against his pulse and not for the first time he wonders if she thinks that he’s playing two roles instead of just one. 

Sometimes he wishes that he was, until her love sears him once more and he’s falling for her again and again, no matter now many times he tries to rise above it. 

Fyodor leads him onto the dance floor, chandelier gently swaying overhead as Dazai follows his wife’s lead and tries not to step on his train. He doesn’t like dresses, unless Fyodor gives one to him. That means that he must like some parts of some dresses and that Fyodor knows that about him better than Dazai knows it about himself. 

He wouldn’t be surprised—he’s nearly a millennia disconnected from the body he was born into and has felt absolutely no desire to go back. Fyodor on the other hand, changes from world to world, left mostly to chance. Chance always errs on the same side, like how Fyodor remains the same over and over again. Just as home as in a spiderweb in a bathtub of blood. Just as home as their bed and his arms. 

“Are you sure you want to do this dance?”

“Of course. You have doubt in my abilities?” Fyodor replies before dipping him, “Rest well, my love. You are in good hands.” Her hands spread a bit, fingers pressing against his spine and his waist and he just about melts.  

“I’ll put my faith in your gentle hands.” Dazai replies and then he falls silent, knowing that he just lost yet another argument. Sometimes he throws things. Sometimes they scream. Sometimes she tries to stab him, hand around his throat and knife to his chest as if she could possibly hold his life in her hands. It’s strange—it’s all manipulation and it’s just as real as it is surreal—it’s a game of who chickens out first psychologically under very real physical threats. 

It’s like a book where the stakes just keep on rising and so the characters just keep on acting more and more until the weight of every action might as well be dust. 

“It always suits you when you do so.” Fyodor tells him as she gently presses her knuckles to Dazai’s lips for him to kiss, to which he obliges, “Now sit down. I have some more discussions to have.”

Dazai takes the dismissal and turns back to his feet. He can see the clock ticking down in his ears, a countdown to an end. It’s nothing new, it’s been there since he put his hands on his—their salvation—and he’s grown to ignore it. It flares up when he thinks that Odasaku’s going to die, like a bad hip when rain is on the horizon. 

He doesn’t close his eyes but does pretend that the changing air pressure is just a myth, that the sound of thunder comes from the sputtering television inside the prairie house. 

Fyodor joins him after a while, leaning on his arm. They don’t speak for a while, content with each others company. Time passes. And then Fyodor stands up and takes his arm, removing him from the room without a word spoken between them until they’re in a descending elevator. 

“Are you sure that everyone important has been removed?”

“Everyone who hasn’t betrayed me.” Replies Fyodor, as the floor lights shine on her face.

Odasaku hasn’t betrayed Fyodor. Dazai doesn’t let out a sigh of relief, because they’re far too physically close to allow such an emotional sign go unnoticed. 

The elevator opens on the maintenance floor. 

And there is Odasaku, coming down from the stairwell. He looks at them, bows, and then Flawless tells him to dodge the bullet Fyodor just aimed at his forehead. Dazai stares for a second, as the bullet plings off the wall and ricochet. It’s only a moment, a moment that lasts a split second and then he’s throwing himself at his wife, placing his body against the barrel and pressing her back against the elevator walls. 

“What are you doing?!” Dazai screeches as Fyodor tries to re aim, dragging the heated muzzle of the gun against his dress. He can feel it against his skin. He hopes it’s burning the fucking dress.

“There is something odd with this world.” Fyodor replies as she grabs his head with her free hand and tries to wrench him out of the way. When that fails, she tries to go for his shoulder and tear him away but Dazai remains still, staring at her as panic bounces off his ribcage and pierces his heart again and again and again, “It shifts and bends around a singular point. Like a hawk curling their wings around their young, a point that the entire universe is made to protect.

“And that point is Oda Sakunosuke. Do you understand, dear?”

“You’ll have to do some more work to convince me before I let you start shooting people~” Dazai lets his voice smooth, gaining a fake rhythm called confidence as he smiles at the other man, pressing the wrist of the hand holding the gun to the elevator wall. 

Fyodor looks at him, then tilts her head to the side with a fake, dull smile. 

“There was never an ‘it’, was there?” Fyodor asks as Dazai slowly twists her wrist. She stares at him with contempt as Dazai eases his fingers around the barrel of the gun. It hurts to touch, but he’ll do it. 

It all hurts, but he’ll do it again and again and again. He’s grown a bit numb by now. 

“Dos-kun!” Calls out a clown, farther down the maintenance tunnels, “I tricked him, just like you said!”

No. 

No no not again. 

Dazai grinds his teeth into dust, glaring down the dark tunnels. The clown hasn’t yet shown their awful, trickster face but the moment he does Dazai will destroy them—Fyodor tears her arm away in his brief moment of distraction and shoots him in the heart. 

It’s fast—first he’s standing and then his heart is a geyser, sending blood in one atrium and out the hole in its chamber. There’s pain, of course there’s pain. His wife just shot him in the chest, Odasaku is dead. Again. 

“Farewell, my parasitic finch.” Fyodor tells him as she cups his head. It is the only thing keeping him aloft before she moves away and he slumps to the ground. 

“Fuck you…and your cute nicknames too.” Dazai tells her as he falls to the floor of the elevator, cold blood leaking out of his chest like a faucet that’s been left on. He can imagine that the faucet is on because they’re in the other room, Fyodor having drawn him away from brushing his teeth to complain about the latest idiot that would soon be a story for true crime enthusiasts. 

The faucet is…slowly running in the background and they’re fifteen stories up and everything is going to be just fine. 

Just…f—

The building explodes. Just on schedule. 

Dazai watches as the maintenance tunnel begins to crumble, watches as the walls around the elevator begin to crumble outwards. He watches the dust rise and settle around his hands as crawls forward, ignoring the frigid liquid coming from his chest as he crawls down the hallways, spitting out phlegm and false hopes until he finds a sick room with a bullethole pox. 

Trap, the clown had said. Dazai could see it now—a room where a single bullet ricochets a thousand times over. It’s impossible to dodge. 

The look on what remains of Odasaku’s face proves that thought correct. Dazai raises his head to laugh just as the ceiling comes down on them both, mashing their bodies into an unrecognizable paste.

He is not conscious for a while—

he did not make himself a thing that could heal—

he simply made himself something that could not die. 

Dazai never assumed that his calling wouldn’t be wrought with danger and death. Pain though, he never liked. Though the pain of being crushed under a building was something he was positively giddy when he found out he skipped it. Well, mostly. Most of his bones have been shattered, but so have most of his nerves so he feels fine~

“What—” The rescue worker says as Dazai sits up. Dazai winks and then the world folds in on itself. The first thing he does is make Fyodor drop dead. Just one single line, not even the grace of a final fight. 

Just a pop! And the world is rewritten once more.

“Goodbye Fedya!” He tells her with glee as the guard’s hands wrap around her forearms, pressing them behind her back. She doesn’t have any death touch this time, no one falls dead for daring to touch her. 

She glares at him from across the courtroom. 

He considers this their divorce—not that they’re married this time. But Dazai didn’t get to take her through the paces last time. Exploding her head doesn’t count. 

Getting her locked away for murder wasn’t quite the same, but he could accept it!

He waves her goodbye as she’s dragged away and wonders how much she knows. Of course she knows that it was him who killed her clown, but has no clue as to why. They’ve never interacted, in fact the world only sprung to life minutes before Nikolai was unceremoniously killed and then ceremoniously (that’s a lie) had the world rewritten to make Fyodor the only one who could have reasonably committed the crime. 

Dazai allowed her enough red herrings to give her a few months, just enough time to realize that he was a eagle and she was only a minnow. Or rather, a small yellow bird that he would crush in his talons. He hopes that she can see him circling overhead, even now. 

“I’m going across the street to the cafe for internet.” Says Odasaku, who he happened to meet perchance because they were both witnesses. This is their fifth time speaking, and the 498th word spoken to each other. Dazai waves him goodbye, just as playful as a one he gave Fyodor. 

Odasaku gives him a more restrained one back. 

Dazai watches him go like an owl. He wants to trail after Fyodor, to keep on crowing out victories into her unworthy, manipulative ears but this world isn’t one made for that. This place is revenge, plain and simple—it is mostly unchanged from the one they came from, eons ago. He didn’t write into the world that civilians could go and taunt criminals, and while he does regret that a bit now, she isn’t the focus. 

She has never been the focus, no matter how brightly she shines. 

After lingering for about two minutes to not seem like he’s following Odasaku, he leaves the building just in time to see Odasaku get hit by a truck. 

The world unwinds. 

She turns to him, a cruel smirk on her lips. 

“An eye for an eye, a body for a body?” She remarks to him before she chokes him. He asphyxiates, but does not die. He destroys her as he has a thousand times before and screams and screams.

He makes the world one more time. He watches Odasaku like a hawk. He isn’t one this time, nor is he the pigeon that nests in Odasaku’s flowerbed later in life. He watches Odasaku kill, grow a family like vines, learn to despise death, spread out into a community, be the father of the bride, and then unceremoniously in an alleyway.

He makes the world one more time. He watches like a fly on the wall. He watches Odasaku take a wrong turn and end up in a shootout. He has no ability. He dies.

He makes the world one more time. 

He watches Odasaku dance with death, Dazai jumps after him into hell and finds that Odasaku was lifted in the other direction.

Dazai never understands why Odasaku is stalked by death in ever reality he makes for him. Maybe it’s God—in that case, Dazai hates It. He hates It with every fiber of his damn being, if he could kill God he’d tear It apart. 

He tells Fyodor this, hundreds of years later. He’s forgiven and forgotten and by that he means that he holds her to everything she did in the past, has done in the present, and will do in the future. But at the same time, she’s Fyodor Dostoevsky and he would never miss a chance to be with her like this, cursing the idea of an all-seeing God and drinking in the taste of each other’s company. 

Odasaku dies, once more.

If Dazai was a poet, then maybe he would have seen the solution earlier. But he is not a poet, and the closest thing he knows to one is Odasaku, and his poet has been locked in a very small box. Nothing is allowed in or out, the only other ‘things’ in this world are the ones that are especially hard to remove. 

He can’t call them humans in this state, he stripped away their bodies, their voices. He can feel them sometimes. Ranpo tries to speak sense into his ears and pull apart the box to free what—who is inside. Fyodor tries to tear at his chest to get to his heart but she has no hands and there’s no more heart for her to tear apart!

(A view, from the other side.

Oda Sakunosuke looks at the white, empty walls of the thing that encompasses his existence. There is more than just thoughts, there are long things that move when electricity in something called the brain sends signals down neurons and those neurons send signals to other neurons and other neurons and other neurons until those things called arms and fingers and legs and toes and knees and elbows move. 

At least, that was what Oda was told. Oda was also told to think of the only thing in this world as Odasaku. Oda was told that they are kind, don’t kill, and wants to finish a novel. Oda does not know what it is to be kind, or what killing was at that point. Oda was given a few sheets of something called paper and a thing called a pencil. 

Oda knows what a novel is—that was the thing that the world sought to explain to him. 

A novel was a written story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Beginning, like the thought to move. Middle, like the millions of neurons that carry out that order. End, like the action of movement. A story has characters, people like Oda that could carry out actions. The world told said ‘people like him’ but Oda doesn’t know what a ‘him’ entails.

The answer Oda got after asking the world was similarly unclear. 

A novel has characters that make actions and thus progress the story. A story is a description of things that ‘people’ do. People meaning characters. 

Oda doesn’t know what people do. When Oda asked, the world told him that people do what ‘he’ does, because Oda is a person. When Oda asked if the world was a people, the world laughed.

No, the world told Oda that the only person that existed right now, was ‘him’.

Oda does not write a novel. Oda wonders if the world knows that. Oda wonders if the world cares because when Oda is not asking questions, all the world does is shine its eye into Oda and ask if Oda has written a novel yet. Oda answers no and the world replies that he needs more time. Not as a question. 

Then the world asks what Oda’s name is. And the answer is the same: Oda Sakunosuke. 

And then the world says, “I’m so glad you’re alive, Odasaku.” 

Once, something that is not the world approaches. Oda hears before seeing, a voice calls out. 

“Oda Sakunosuke?” Oda is called and Oda comes to the source. There is…a…the white wall is no longer all white. There is a spot of black. Oda doesn’t know what to call the change, just as Oda doesn’t know the voice that comes from it, “You are, Oda Sakunosuke, aren’t you?”

“I am. And you?”

“Not much.” The voice says. The sound of its words change to a something called a tone that Oda does not understand, “Listen to me, Oda. I only have a chance to say this once, before he stops drowning in his satisfaction and notices that I’m here…you are supposed to nod, if you do understand. By that, shake your head up and down.”

Oda remembers what a head is and shakes it. Oda does not understand. 

“You are not human.” The voice tells Oda, “And there is no story you can create. You must be something to create.” Then, the spot of black is gone, along with the second voice. The third Oda has ever known, just as inscrutable as the first two. 

Oda doesn’t know what creation is, and when Oda calls out to the world, the world doesn’t answer. The only response Oda gets is not immediate, after a ‘short break’ that the world ‘excuses himself’ for. The world tells Oda that the voice is gone. 

Oda wonders about many things. Oda wonders what is creation. Oda wonders what is human. Oda wonders about stories, how to write, about the world. Oda wonders about the world. 

Once, the world asked Oda if Oda was happy. Oda did not know how to answer. The world asked Oda if there was any pain. Oda asked what pain was. The world asked if existence was hard. Oda asked was existence was. The world said that Odasaku was existence, that he was proof that there was something out there worth anything. The world never asked if Oda was happy or in pain ever again. 

Sometimes, the world could forget things. 

Oda wonders how the world forgot happiness. 

)

Dazai looks over what remains of Ranpo, smeared to the far corners of this world that has no corners, no more than an inkling in his ear, no more than a single thought stretching centuries. 

He wishes that Fyodor looked scared of the prospect of what he could do for her if she ever stepped out of line like Ranpo did, but he supposes that Fyodor is opposed to Ranpo. She wants to destroy him, and sometimes he lets her tear him apart. Her eyes are open, a well for the weak to fall into and allow threads to be sew through the cap between the scapula and clavicle and then back out the other side in the same pattern. 

She wanted to know what makes the world like this? It’s him and a God that hates Odasaku and thus hates him in turn. God has hollowed him out; Dazai is going to fill himself back up. He has. 

Odasaku is alive. This is the longest he’s ever been alive. He’s writing, he’s going to finish a novel, Dazai is finally going to read what he is going to write. Dazai will be able to sit with Odasaku and have his old friend read out to him. Dazai can sit across Odasaku’s legs and just listen to his old friend talk. 

Dazai wants it so badly that the hollow in his chest aches.

He looks inside the small chamber. 

“What is your name?” He asks, just to make sure. 

“Oda Sakunosuke.” Odasaku tells him, denying the name that he gives out to his friends for himself, “And I’m not writing your novel.”

“...What.” Dazai says. One simple word. He knows that he’s keeping a handle on his emotions because Odasaku doesn’t cower, “Why not?”

“Because I am not human. I don’t know what stories are. I don’t know what a novel is. I don’t know what is it to write or how to write.” Odasaku tells him, “I don’t know what story I’m meant to be finishing.”

“I can tell you.” Dazai responds as kindly as he can. 

Odasaku looks up at him. 

Dazai crushes this world like an ant under his foot and starts anew.

“That means nothing to me.” Odasaku tells him, “Because I’m not human.”

“But you are!” Dazai cries out. 

“How?” Odasaku asks. 

Hold, crumble—

Unfold. 

“Because you are Odasaku. You are kind. You’ve saved orphans, four—five of them. And you keep on doing it again and again and again.”

“I don’t even know what an orphan is.”

“It’s a human with dead parents.”

Odasaku looks up at him. 

“I do not know what a parent is. Nor death.”

“Death is what happens to you if I let you out.”

“Are you inside or outside?”

“Outside.”

“Are you death?”

“No. No no no no no. I am not death. I am what is preventing death from getting to you.”

“So I will never meet death.”

“So you will never die.”

“Is there a human outside?”

Hold, caress. Look at the paper, inspect the mistakes. Tear, eat, swallow—

Try again. 

“There is no humans outside. The only human in this world is you.”

“So I am supposed to know humanity?”

Something snickers. 

“Yes, because you are human. I could tell you more about yourself, if you want.”

“How bad is death?”

“It’s wonderful. But not for you. That’s why it’s out here with me. Don’t ask about it anymore.”

“How am I supposed to write a novel?”

Out of the two of us, you are the poet. I am the one you left behind. I am the one who is going to save you. I am the one living in the darkness, I am the one ignoring your words. We can’t both be bad listeners this isn’t going to work. 

“I’ll teach you how to write. I’ll teach you what a story is. But I won’t let you out, I won’t let you  die.”

“So humans never die?”

“They do. You don’t get to. Not again.”

“So I’ve died before?”

“It’s because of me you still get to write. And be alive. It’s because of me that I get to talk to you, Odasaku. All I want to do is read you story. All I want to do is hug you. All I want to do is call you Odasaku and eat your curry and drink with you. And Ango, I guess. He’s fine when he isn’t a traitor.”

“Am I alive?” Says the Odasaku that calls himself Oda, looking up at Dazai but somehow it’s Dazai who feels like he’s staring into God’s eyes and being burned. 

“Yes.”

“What does it mean to be alive?”

“It means that you can talk to me.”

“Is that it?”

Breathe. Rip. Fix the errors and one more time—

Try again. 

“No, there is more to it than that. Like writing. Like talking to people. Like taking care of people. Like becoming a better person.”

“How am I supposed to do any of that.”

Dazai withdraws. 

He realizes, for the first time, that he has absolutely no idea how long he’s been doing this. Flitting between worlds, a god with no power but the ability to remember what the worlds prior. He writes what he thinks will work, taking himself from world to world and seeing what sticks. Seeing how long Odasaku lives. 

Not how Odasaku lives. Just how long. 

It might have been hundreds of years. Maybe thousands. He knows that there’s been times where he’s been a guardian angel for decades, a bystander for seconds. Dazai has done this so many times that he cannot keep track of it anymore. ‘Anymore’, as if he ever bothered to track. A bloodhound following a scent, not carrying of the ground trampled over. 

He remembers that once Akutagawa was called a rabid dog. Maybe it was more than once. Maybe hundreds of times when Dazai has had his eyes so firmly closed. 

Was it a world where Dazai was his mentor? If so, it makes sense. Who else can teach a dog tricks than a mutt? 

Didn’t Dazai tell himself, once, that he wanted Odasaku to live? That he wanted Odasaku to live and be alive. 

He looks at the bandages around his arms. A constant, one of the few constants throughout the worlds. When he has a human body, which is not a constant but it is close enough. At the edge where his bandages fray, he can see words. He wears the Book on his skin, so that whenever he needs to rewrite, the paper is literally at his fingertips. 

Dazai spreads his hands. 

Fyodor looks up at him. She doesn’t have a face, but he knows she’s smirking. She knows what he’s thinking, so of course she smirks. 

Dazai unravels the bandages against his wrist. 

“Do you love me?” She asks. The question is impossibly alarming with what he’s considering. As always, they’re fighting to step on each other’s ankles. 

“I think I do.” Dazai replies, as honestly as he can, “I’ll say it once, because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say it again. I love you, Fyodor.” There is a lot he’s not saying, namely an apology, but that is because he doesn’t want to. They’re both awful in their own ways, but with all the horrible things they’ve done, they’re about the thousandth person they should apologize to. 

Besides, he’s going to make things even worse the next time. He erases a crucial part of all the stories, inking out the part that made him immortal. 

“Do you love me?” Dazai asks her as he writes himself into the story, as a threat instead of a protector because if God hates Dazai and Dazai cannot control God, then he must put himself in His place. It won’t work forever, but it doesn’t need to. 

Only for some time. 

“Yes.” She tells him and he has to believe that she’s not lying to him. He doesn’t know if he’s been uncautious or overly cautious, they lie and obfuscate so often that it is best to believe that they’re lying. He’s seen her lie through her teeth so many times.

…But maybe, she was never lying when she said she loved him. 

But it isn’t a maybe that he’ll never hear it again.

Ah he hates this world. Truly, it’s awful. 

Being Mori is really awful. Even worse is having Odasaku point a gun at him. After all he’s done…after all he’s done, in this world, and other’s, Dazai shouldn’t be surprised. 

But he’s almost done. 

He’s practiced the words falling from his mouth dozens of times. He needed to, he only has one chance at this. He can’t falter just because the building shakes, or because the look in the eyes of the people that had once been his protégés makes his empty chest rattle. 

Dazai takes a step back, and smiles. 

Here is a world where Odasaku is happy. He is alive, and the main threat is him. Ranpo is satisfied, and Fyodor is away from him. He doesn’t know what she’s doing, he hopes she’s happy. 

The leader of the Port Mafia falls to his death. 

He is buried. People come to his funeral, but his goal was never to make friends with them.

Odasaku doesn’t come to his funeral, because he was never made aware of it at the time. He only sees the gravesite from a distance because an unmarked grave on mafia-controlled private property just happened to be part of the place he was supposed to be keeping an eye on. 

He gets to watch as a man holding a shovel calmly climbs the fence, striding onto the property with such ease that it takes Odasaku a moment to realize that something is wrong here. Still, he doesn’t speak up—he doesn’t have any loyalty to the mafia to cause him to speak up and besides, his job here is to just watch and see. 

So Odasaku gets a front row seat as Fyodor digs a whole in the ground and reaches around inside for a moment before opening something with a lot of effort. The coffin of whoever had been buried in the nameless grave. 

Then she takes out a flask and pours its insides over the body. 

And then, as Fyodor gives Odasaku a curt wave, she opens a light and throws it on top of the body. The Book burns—

“Are you done?” She asks him, the edges of her words curling with cruelty, “I hope you had fun, with that thing.”

“What?” Dazai says because he was dead. Finally. Finally dead and gone, he didn’t have to do anything anymore he didn’t have to worry about being alive. 

And yet here he is, in this body he rejected as a child and never chose ever again. He can feel his breasts resting on the bed, shifting with every breath. Oh he hates this he hates this. 

“That thing in your hand. I was planning on using it for something. You should know better than to go through my stuff.” Fyodor reaches over and gently pries the page from his hand and instead replaces it by covering the top half of his body with the blanket… re covering?

How long has it been. 

“What?” Dazai says again.

Fyodor smirks and kisses his forehead, “And I thought it might be useless.”