Chapter Text
There is a legend, ever known by few and still forgotten by the most of them: if two versions of the same person by chance get to live a key moment of their existence at the exact same time, it may happen that this triggers a quite peculiar singularity, The Swap.
It is a possibility so small that it is possible that such occurrence never happened and never will; the reason it has always been considered a legend rather than knowledge. But sometimes some people, let's name one: Edward Murphy, make predictions that come out to be true in the long run.
"Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time" describes the situation Dazai lived pretty well.
November 1st, year XXXX. 10:39 a.m.
“Boss?”
Chuuya turned his head to face the man behind him. “Hirotsu.” He furrowed. “Have you always been here?”
“No, boss, I have just arrived,” he said reverently.
“Are you here to tell me the same words of everyone else?” Chuuya wanted to make his question sound angry, threatening even, if necessary. But his voice betrayed him and chose to break right in the middle of the phrase. Now he sounded desperate. Great, just great.
“I would never dare.” The old man shot a look a glance past Chuuya and immediately after he changed direction, as if he didn’t want his action to be seen. “But after… him, the organization is in turmoil. We need someone on the top to give us stability.”
“And I assumed that role,” Chuuya reminded to himself. “You are right, as always. I must take the reins of this mess, especially when I have put myself right in the middle of it.”
After that a man, the man that every soul feared since the moment he had stepped in the criminal organization not older than a child, the man some whispered to have killed the previous boss, the man that had ensured that Port Mafia reached its golden era, after that that man decided to throw himself from the roof of his office at Chuuya didn’t even know what high, after that Chuuya had taken over without anyone to stand in his way. Some supported him, some feared him; in all honesty, he didn’t care.
Every new boss had a first unwritten task: eliminate the naysayers of his own rise. The mad man who died when Chuuya was fourteen did it, Mori did it, he did it. Now it was Chuuya’s turn.
“Just… give me a minute,” he said to the older man in the room.
“Of course.” And he made to leave.
“Wait, Hirotsu.”
“Yes?”
“You are the wisest person I know, and the only one I can currently trust. Please, please tell me what I should do.”
He let for an instant fall the façade he had so desperately tried to put on himself, the one that pictured a man confident of his choices and without any regret, the one that was the opposite of how he felt in that very moment. He had never been good at pretending someone he was not. So that one could see all the anguish that had been haunting him in the past few weeks.
“What should I do with him?” he asked again.
Hirotsu hesitated, surprised by the question. “If I may… I suggest you let him go. He has, since he had put himself in command of us all, made his choices without ever listening to reason and holding anyone accountable. The last choice he made was aimed at being the final, even if it failed to hit the mark as he would have liked. But there is no hope left for him.”
Almost unintentionally, Chuuya bared his teeth. “Oh, right,” he started saying in a bitter tone. “Yeah, ‘just fuckin’ kill him’ Chuuya.”
“Boss, what the doctor has said…”
“I don’t care what she has said!” Chuuya shouted almost without realizing it. “Medicine makes progress, there must be a thousand skills around here that can fix him, I won’t do it.”
Hirotsu got closer to him, maybe to show him support. “You can’t kill a man that is already dead.”
For a moment Chuuya found himself unable to breathe, he felt as if the man had just punched him right in the face. He didn’t like what he was seeing in his eyes, Hirotsu was not hesitating because he feared him or because he hated him, that was pity. He was looking at him as a lost puppy he had just found on a rainy street. Chuuya couldn’t tolerate it, not this too.
“Go,” he ordered with all the hatred he could muster in his voice, and this time he succeeded well. “I’ll stay here for as fucking long as I like. If you have something to say about it you may as well swallow it.”
“…Yes, boss.” Hirotsu bowed his head and without further delay he took his leave.
When the door closed again Chuuya immediately regretted his words. All the anger he had directed at Hirotsu up to that moment now was directed towards himself. He didn’t mean to attack the man, the only man that really helped him and cared about him in those days. He felt that a whirlwind of emotions was overwhelming him more and more with every hour he spent in that room, and he didn’t know how to vent them. He had so much to do, all things of utmost importance that if not executed excellently would have led to his head being severed from his neck. Was that the weight he had brought on his shoulder alone for all those years?
There was a flowerpot on a small table next to him. Chuuya grabbed it with such force that he broke it in his hand. Only when he felt the blood dropping from his fingers he realized he had not used if ability to prevent the injuries.
“Shit…”
And it was then that his gaze fell back to the very place he had carefully avoided all that time. Chuuya inspired loudly through his teeth. Dazai… fucking Dazai.
His body- he, he was laying perfectly still in a bed that smelled of the same disinfectant that was used in hospitals, even though they were not in a hospital but in a very dark room of the basement of a building under the influence of Port Mafia. No windows, only one door and five people who were aware of his status, including him and Hirotsu. Many wanted him dead and tried to make him become such when he was full operating as the boss, Chuuya didn’t imagine the number that would try to put an end to his life now that he was completely defenseless.
He no longer wore the long, inky-black robes, but plain pajama-like clothes, the only thing that remained the same were the bandages that covered almost the entirety of his body, this time for a specific reason. The only thing that differed from before was that his face was completely uncovered; Chuuya didn’t remember ever seeing both of his eyes, when he was seventeen or eighteen he had even begun to think that he was missing one. When he had first seen him like that it took him some seconds to recognize him. No elegant clothes, no bandages on his face, no smirk on his lips, but somehow the same tired expression.
‘Brain death,’ were the words of the woman who had taken care of him for the past weeks, ‘it is an irreversible condition. The only thing that it is keeping him alive is this machine but, mister, alive is not a correct word to use in this case’.
Chuuya slowly moved to sit on the chair near the bed. There was a tube going into Dazai’s mouth to make him breathe, as he could not have done it himself, that kept him from looking as if he was sleeping.
He let out a ragged breath. “You really are the biggest of assholes,” he told him. “At least you could die all at once and not force me to make this kind of choice.” A pause. “I really don’t know why I am so surprised; you have always loved bothering me in every possible way, you would have fallen out of character if this time had been different.”
Chuuya stayed silent of a minute, or ten, he didn’t know. What he knew was that when he resumed talking it was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from his shoulders, ready to be replaced by a much greater one.
“Hirotsu is right, I should move on. I have responsibilities that I have delayed for too long, I can’t continue like this, and you are no exception for that. Fucking hell, Dazai, I have always wanted to kill you, but I would never think it would happen like that.”
Chuuya took his phone and sent a message of one word. A few minutes later the same woman who told him that there was no hope for Dazai was under the door of that horrible room. Chuuya saw her eyes rest for a moment on his bleeding hand, but shifted them immediately to turn to him.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Just do it.”
She nodded and went for the machine. Chuuya focused all his attention on the man who had once been his best partner and his worst enemy, knowing perfectly well that that image wouldn’t leave him for the rest of his life. He did not believe in any kind of life after death, but he hoped, with any remaining empathy he had for the man, that he would at least find peace in the void he had so much longed for all his life.
The machine was turned off.
And that was it. The air stopped coming in and out of his lungs, his heart stopped beating, and Dazai disappeared from the room, leaving just the imprint of his weight on the white mattress.
It was 11:07 a.m.
November 1st, year XXXX. 7: 12 a.m.
Kunikida heard him snickering before even seeing him. A moment, just a moment... ah, there it was: the headache.
“Would you shut up!”
“But Kunikida!”
“No! stop! I have to take this before being mentally prepared to deal with you,” he said waving the aspirin packet.
“But Kunikida!” started again Dazai, completely ignoring his request. “You should praise me! I stayed up all night just to locate it!”
Kunikida filled himself a glass of water on the table; he had already prepared everything the day before, knowing that his partner would do something strange and loud like every morning. He already didn’t appreciate exchanging words right after waking up, if the one he had to talk was Dazai… well, he would consider himself blessed if he arrived at noon.
“Don’t tell me you don’t appreciate such devotion to work,” continued Dazai as if he were completely blind to Kunikida’s murderous expression at that point.
“I appreciate tranquility,” told him the blonde while putting a tablet in his mouth and swallowing everything with water.
“Oh.” Dazai, for once, actually made a realistic concerned expression. “Then I shouldn’t tell you the place where our special item is, is about to blow up.”
Kunikida almost chocked on water. It must not have been a pretty sight, because the surprise had been so strong that the liquid even came out of his nose and the man started coughing uncontrollably. Dazai at least had the decency not to comment on it.
“What do you mean ‘the place is about to blow up’?” he asked as soon as he was able to breathe again.
Now the partner looked almost embarrassed. “Well, you know, the usual. Bombs, fire, a great smoke, partial or complete destruction of the whole thing… hey, don’t look at me like that! I wasn’t the one to place those things there!”
Kunikida rubbed his eyes with the forefinger and the thumb. The night before, he had set his alarm clock more than an hour earlier than usual after Dazai's cheerful call had reached him, telling him that in a few hours he would find the place where the Book was hidden. He had not been able to go to bed earlier, due to other duties, and between anticipation and anxiety he had slept even less than usual. Now he was watching the other explain to him that everything could go up in smoke, literally, with two of the most pronounced dark circles he had ever had.
“And this could happen at any moment?” he asked.
“Oh, no. This is the good news: Rampo and I discussed it on the phone and it should happen in three hours, four if we are lucky.”
Of course Dazai had refrained from telling him there was also good news, but at least they wouldn't have had to run from side to side through the flames hoping that that book, among other things, was also miraculously fireproof.
“Let me make a call,” he told Dazai.
He took out his phone from his pocket and searched Yosano’s name among the contacts. The first attempt to talk to her went awry. After a couple of rings of the second she finally picked up.
‘What’s up, Kunikida?’ she said in a slurred voice. She was sleeping? At that hour?
“Good morning. You have to come at the Agency, we need you.”
‘Oh, really?’ “Really?” Yosano and Dazai asked in unison.
“Don’t you trust me, Kunikida?” Dazai asked as if what the partner had said had deeply wounded him.
‘Don’t you trust Dazai, Kunikida?’ repeated Yosano after hearing him at the other end of the phone. She was most likely trying to find a way to go back to sleep.
“It's not that I don't trust him,” Kunikida explained, in disbelief that he had to justify himself to the two of them, “but I don't want to take unnecessary risks of losing my life when I have to enter a building on the verge of being blown to pieces.”
‘You are going to a place that is about to explode, that’s great, very interesting,’ said Yosano with the least interested of voices.
“We could be there well before the bomb timer reaches a critical time, the place is not that far away,” told him Dazai.
“It's almost two hours by car plus about three quarters of an hour on foot.”
“We are still under three hours.”
“We're too tight with the timing, and considering your presence there's bound to be some catastrophic unforeseen. So I have to add about an hour. And so we're right in the middle of the hour when we could blow up.”
“Nothing catastrophic has ever happened," protested the other.
“Yamashita Park.”
Dazai looked at him, betrayed. “That we agreed never to mention again.”
“Yosano,” Kunikida called. He had not heard for a while; did she fall back asleep? “are you still there?”
‘Yes yes, I’m coming. Almost there.’ Kunikida silently thanked her for being so quick.
After a couple of minutes, the door opened and the woman entered the room. She looked tired, but still more rested than Kunikida and Dazai combined.
“You owe me one, Kunikida, for making me coming to work on my day off,” she told him with a smirk.
The blond widened his eyes. He had completely forgot. That was why she was sleeping. “I- I’m very sorry…” he stammered.
She made a gesture with her hand as if to dismiss his apology. She yawned. “From what I understood the matter is pretty urgent. Shall we go?”
Now, there was one microscopic, tiny, totally insignificant problem: who was going to drive?
Kunikida didn't trust himself because of his lack of sleep the night before. Yosano had driven maybe twice in her life and had just woken up, not the best chance to practice behind the wheel. Dazai, even if he had been perfectly awake and operative, which for some reason he also managed to appear to be, was simply a public menace. Kunikida had let him drive once while in the car with him and it had been enough for a hundred lives.
They continued to argue about it with each other for a good fifteen minutes. Kunikida had ruled himself out in advance, Yosano insisted that she could do it, it wouldn't be so difficult to make that metal box move for almost two hours. Dazai tried to steal her place for the whole time, by saying that if he took the wheel they would have been much faster. Kunikida had retorted that there was more chance of them crashing into a pole in the first five minutes. Dazai glared at him. Yosano returned to say she was the best option, and the whole talk repeated itself again.
Eventually they took a taxi.
“Well, this is embarrassing,” Dazai said with a discontent face as he took his place in the back seat.
“I agree,” said Yosano near him.
From the front seat, Kunikida sighed.
10:42 a.m.
Kunikida looked away from his watch, they had still time. Kind of.
The taxi driver had fled in a hurry after he had dropped them off near the place where Kunikida had asked as diplomatically as possible. The blond did not know whether his haste to leave was due to the not very positive rumors about the place or to get as far away as possible from Dazai and Yosano.
During the first part of the journey the two had remained in perfect silence, so absolute that Kunikida felt obliged to strike up a conversation with the taxi driver himself, wondering in the process whether Dazai had jumped out of the window. It was certainly more like him than to remain quiet. From the rear-view mirror his partner continued to watch him with his arms crossed, but Kunikida still felt the need to glance over from time to time.
Then Yosano started to chat with the middle-aged man and Dazai inserted himself rather easily into their talk. And that would have been a good thing, a good thing, sure, if the two people speaking to the poor man had been anyone but the two of them. From one who spoke of dissections and amputations to the other who had something to say on every subject of dubious morality, Kunikida saw the color gradually disappear from the man's face.
When she casually suggested removing one or two of his organs ("but yes, of course, you'll live just fine without them!") and Dazai mentioned that the price she was offering was very convenient, considering what the black market offered, he had enough.
Even before Kunikida could say anything to them he stopped the car so suddenly that they were all thrown forward.
"Oh, what a terrible disgrace! I'm afraid I'm out of fuel," he had said, and dumped them there. The lie had been so obvious that no one had been able to point it out to the others. Looking back perhaps the rumors had not played such a big role in the actions of the driver.
Kunikida cast a long glance at Dazai.
“What?” he asked with the innocence of a child.
He felt the need to jump at his neck but managed to hold back. For his sanity, he told himself, for his sanity.
So they had started walking. They would have done it anyway, even if the taxi driver had not lost his patience before the end of the ride, but now their journey had become much longer. If before it used to be about three quarters of an hour, the blond didn't want to think about what they had turned into. The bombs attached to the building, waiting to blow up his weeks' work and a night of Dazai’s, didn't leave his thoughts for a second and made him more agitated with every passing minute.
As it had happened earlier, their journey began in total silence (not counting Yosano's only comment towards the man: “how rude of him”. But no one had replied to her, and so even her voice had died out).
Then it was Dazai's turn to speak first. Kunikida hadn’t really registered his words, but most likely it was something about suicide. Yosano had immediately taken the opportunity to answer him something else that Kunikida had not really listened to, but he had heard medical terms several times, so maybe she was giving him advice on how to commit suicide or how not to. He made a mental note to check on his partner more often from that moment on, so that he would not be more likely to find him at the bottom of a river every now and then or hanging from a ceiling.
Basically, most of their journey had been Dazai and Yosano talking to each other about something deeply troubling while Kunikida made back-up plans for any details that might go wrong on their morning mission.
And then, at last, they had arrived.
In front of them, in the middle of the woods, stood a mansion that had been abandoned for who knows how long, built by who knows who and why on that very spot for who knows what reason. Kunikida really didn’t care about anything but the fact they were there, they had made it.
He looked at his watch and saw that they somehow had made it in time. They were within the time frame. It had taken them three and a half hours to get there instead of two and a half, it was true, but in all honesty they had done better than Kunikida's more optimistic predictions.
Now the only problem remaining was that they were exactly at the time when the whole building could explode at any moment. Right, it would have been too easy otherwise.
“So… who’s going first?” asked Dazai in the same way as if he were asking the others what they wanted to order takeaway. “If no one offers I can go, blowing up would be a perfect way to die, very photogenic.”
“And this is exactly the reason you are not going. Yosano cannot heal you, I don’t want to find you in a shape so bad that you can use it as an excuse not to go to work. I’ll go.”
Dazai raised an eyebrow. “And you will be going alone? It will take you forever to thoroughly search for something as small as a book and certainly well hidden in such a vast place.”
“Of course I’m not going alone, Yosano is coming with me.”
“Not a smart move,” corrected him the doctor. “If something happens you may not know where to find me to help you.”
“And I’m faster at finding things, you know it, and we are playing a timed game,” added Dazai.
Kunikida felt the headache coming back. “Just tell me you won’t blow up.”
Dazai smirked in a way that immediately made him regret his words. “I make no promises.”
And they were in.
Kunikida didn’t know when the place had been abandoned, but he was pretty sure it was more than ten years earlier. Part of the roof had fallen off and part of the floor inside, and a mixture of dust and wild grasses decorated it in every corner. It was difficult to find furniture that had remained intact, more common instead were broken glass from both windows and old picture frames. Something about it made the detective incredibly nostalgic, as if those were the remnants of a story that no one would ever tell again. He would have liked to see who or what those forgotten pictures depicted, but he had no time to waste.
Dazai, on the other hand, at his side, was completely still, intent on looking at the place from top to bottom, scanning it down to the smallest detail. He distractedly holding his chin with his index finger and thumb, an attitude that Kunikida had seen him do several times when he was particularly focused on something.
And then Kunikida heard a sound. A short, mechanical, and repetitive sound. The ticking of a timer.
“Dazai…”
“I know,” answered him the partner without changing expression, “but we don’t have time to defuse them all. We have to hurry.”
The dark-haired suddenly widened his eyes. “Oh, there it is.” And rushed up to the stairs to the second floor.
“Wait, Dazai!” Kunikida followed right after him.
Dazai stopped at the end of the stairs, his eyes switching quickly from door to door on either side of the hallway that stretched before them. A second later he was already running toward one of the last ones on the left. He tried to open it, but it was locked, so he tried to force it open, but his haste prevented him from doing a good job.
“Move,” told him Kunikida and he kicked the door open.
The room, no better put than the rest of the mansion, which they entered from the few recognizable objects that had come in gave Kunikida an idea of how old the place must be. That particular one must have been the bedroom of a young girl who in the present must have had white hair and deep wrinkles running down her face.
Dazai paid those things no attention and immediately went for the dusty drawer. Top drawer: nothing. Dazai left the middle and opened the one at the bottom without hesitation.
“I’ll never understand how you do it,” Kunikida said, amazed. In front of them there was a simple book, good as new, with a simple brown cover whose pages Kunikida already knew were perfectly blank.
“Oh, you know, nothing special, I’m just the best.” He stopped as if to reflect on his words. “But don’t tell Rampo.”
Kunikida could not suppress a laugh, feeling all the stress accumulated up to that moment slipping away from him. This he could give him.
And that was when the first bomb exploded.
Kunikida felt the floor rumbling so hard under his feet it made him fall. A few pieces of the ceiling broke off and fell near him and fine powder had begun to fall from above. When he turned towards Dazai, also on the floor, he saw an ill-concealed alarm on his face.
A second explosion.
This one collapsed the chunk of floor where Kunikida was lying. For a moment he felt the terrible sensation of being in free fall, but he crashed soon after along with small and large debris. Before he could fully realize his surroundings one more bomb. Perhaps he lost consciousness for a few seconds because he remembered absolutely nothing from his fall to finding himself with his torso under a burning rubble. He began to cough; smoke filled everything and burned his eyes like an ember.
“Dazai!” he cried between a cough and another. No response. The only ubiquitous sound was the popping of wood on fire.
He desperately tried to free himself from the rubble with considerable struggle; had it not been for the most primitive instinct of survival perhaps he would have given up several times.
When he succeeded he ran without a second's thought in the direction of the stairs, one arm in front of his mouth to try to keep at least some of the smoke from entering his lungs. He had tears in his eyes and began to sweat because of the hellish temperature that had set in.
On the second floor, an explosion near him caused him to slam violently against the opposite wall of the hallway. his ears began to ring and he felt a liquid run down his arm. He pushed on.
“Dazai!” he cried again when he reached the room they were in.
There was a dark figure laying motionless on the still intact floor. Dazai. Kunikida rushed to his side, trying to bring him back to consciousness, but the partner did not open his eyes. Then decided to lift him by weight.
Actually, the man didn't weigh that much, much less than some might have expected. So, even in those conditions, Kunikida didn't find it particularly more difficult than it already would have been to make the path in reverse.
As soon as they were outside Kunikida collapsed on his hands and knees, consequently dropping Dazai next to him as well. He began coughing violently again, now that his lungs craved the fresh air. He heard Yosano run towards them, but when he was able to raise his eyes to look at her he did not see a relieved expression, rather all the blood seemed to have drained from her face. She was looking at Dazai.
“He isn’t breathing,” she said in what was barely more than a whisper.
She gently put a hand on him. Under normal conditions Yosano’s ability would never work on Dazai, but there was a small window of time when he was at death's door, where his own ability would deactivate, allowing the doctor to heal him. All they could do was hope that they were in that window.
“Don’t die,” Yosano said.
…And Dazai’s chest began to rise and lower again. Kunikida felt the tears he had just wiped away return.
It was only then that he noticed Dazai was wearing different clothes.
It was 11: 15 a.m.