Work Text:
The Setting Sun (The Sunrise)
Immersed as he was in listing off all the grievances that had been stacking up since this morning, each one meticulously recorded in his notebook, it took a full five minutes for Kunikida to realize he was now walking alone. He had to backtrack down the path and back onto the promenade to find his partner, who was staring dreamily into the waters of Tokyo Bay as the setting sun painted the skies reflected in the waters in shades of orange.
Kunikida’s voice cracked like a whip, startling a couple of nearby civilians. “Don’t even think about it, Dazai! You’ve already made us late, I am not taking the time to fish you out of the bay! Again! I’ll leave you to the fish!” He wouldn’t, of course, but the last thing he needed right now was to have to return to the Agency’s office soaking wet with his nuisance of a partner half-conscious and his precious notebook soggy and probably as useless as his aforementioned nuisance of a partner.
Dazai appeared not to have heard him. “How beautiful it is,” he sighed, “the setting sun. It must be just as beautiful, when a life fades.”
Kunikida harrumphed. Dazai was always prattling nonsense about death and wanting to die, and no one at the Agency took him seriously. They all damn well knew how terrifyingly intelligent and cunning this man was. His bumbling endeavors to end his own life, sometimes in the most bizarre ways—like trapping himself in an oil drum—were obviously farcical, or else they wouldn’t all have failed. There were moments, however, when a kind of look came over Dazai’s face, a look of such darkness and sorrow that the weight of it crushed the youth of his features and left him aged and cold and weary. Those were moments when Kunikida thought that he was seeing the real Dazai, the man behind the masks of buffoonery, and it chilled him to the bone. In those moments, Kunikida believed that Dazai really did wish for death. And that one day, his attempts to end his own life would not be so bumbling or so clearly designed to fail.
In those moments, Kunikida remembered Sasaki, and the expression of peaceful relief that had been on her face as the bullet pierced her chest and she collapsed into a pool of her own blood.
This was one such moment. Kunikida looked out across the waters, ablaze with the molten rays of the dying sunlight as they faded into the west. He looked to where Dazai looked, and wondered what it was that Dazai saw. Or didn’t see, perhaps.
“Death isn’t beautiful,” he said, gruffly. He crossed his arms over his chest, a protective gesture against the memories of Sasaki, of her face, of how red her blood had been. “And the sun may set, but night passes, and the sun rises again. So must we.”
Dazai turned to look at him. His eyes were as black as the ocean that stretched out beneath their feet, tinged red with the glow of the sunset like the water’s restless surface. “You think so? That’s very poetic, Kunikida. Is that written in your notebook?”
Kunikida scowled. He was extremely uncomfortable, and he did what he always did when he got uncomfortable and didn’t know how to deal with it (which was always): he got annoyed instead. He still had his notebook in his hand and he waved it in Dazai’s face, nearly smacked him with it.
“You know what’s written in here? That every morning, the sun rises, and every man rises with it to face another day, to work, to put every bit of his heart and soul into his work, so he can be useful and do what’s right! How can anyone sleep at night if he hasn’t devoted himself to doing everything he can to follow his ideals and do his duty? Every new day is a new day of life, and what is life if not devotion? If not dedication? We must devote ourselves to everyday, just as the sun must rise in the morning and bring us a new day!”
He had never actually said any of this aloud, at least not put so bluntly (or so aggressively). One morning, Kunikida, first to the office as always, had been sitting at his desk and writing in his notebook when a sleepy Atsushi had approached him from behind and startled him so badly that the poor boy had nearly ended up flipped around and slammed to the floor. Atsushi had asked what he was writing. Sometimes, the lad ventured to pose this inquiry. He was curious by nature (curiosity killed the cat, Kunikida thought sourly) and as he had grown more comfortable around Kunikida and the others he had also become more comfortable prying into their personal affairs every once and a while.
Well, perhaps that was an ungracious way to put it.
Kunikida had told him, at least a little bit of the thoughts he had been recording in the pages of his notebook. The virtue of hard work and dedication to one’s ideals, the duty to which one was bound by those very same ideals.
One day with work well done makes a lifetime, he’d said. Then he slammed the notebook shut and told Atsushi to get to work. Atsushi had, and perhaps it had been Kunikida’s imagination, but he appeared to throw himself at his work with a new motivation and energy. A wonder, that.
And wonders never ceased—back in the present, Dazai had actually gone quiet. He even looked thoughtful. Perhaps, however, that was again only wishful thinking on Kunikida’s part, to think that Dazai might actually take something he said to heart. Kunikida had never been as good as Atsushi was at demystifying Dazai.
With a huff, Kunikida glanced at his watch. An eyebrow twitched.
“We are now an hour and a half late. Once again, you’ve ruined my schedule. Now move your ass or I will bring you back to the office in cuffs.”
Dazai continued to look thoughtful for another moment. Then his face broke into a grin. “Why, Kunikida-san,” he said slyly, “I would never have thought you a man with such…tastes.”
It took a full thirty seconds for Kunikida to pick up on the innuendo. He went comically scarlet. And then he snapped. He snatched Dazai by the collar and dragged him away from the railing. He briefly considered just throwing the man into the ocean, but then he remembered that was what Dazai wanted.
-
Early the next morning, Kunikida had just finished dressing when there was a knock on his door.
Dazai, who was infamous for showing up to work an hour late on most days and never showing up at all on others, was standing there, awake and fully dressed, amazingly. At least, Kunikida thought it was amazing, until he looked a little closer and observed the prominent bags under Dazai’s eyes and the rumpled state of his clothes (more rumpled than usual, anyway). The other man had clearly not slept a wink.
“What—”
Dazai did not give him time to finish the question. He snatched Kunikida by the arm and dragged him out of his dorm with unsuspected strength. For a man who was so thin and generally disinclined to engage in physical combat, he had a grip like iron when he wanted to. Although Kunikida was well aware that he was stronger, larger, and significantly better skilled, he made no attempt to fight Dazai off. He was too bewildered.
Dazai dragged him all the way to Yamashita Park and did not release his arm until they had reached a bench. Kunikida thought this might be the same spot they had stopped last night, but he wasn’t sure. Dazai probably knew. Dazai sat down, and idly patted the open space next to him as if he had not just basically kidnapped his partner without any sort of explanation at the crack of dawn.
Kunikida finally got to finish his question. “What the fuck, Dazai?”
Dazai patted the bench again, more firmly this time. “Sit down.”
Kunikida crossed his arms and scowled. “Why’d you bring me out here? I swear, Dazai, if I’m late getting to the office because of you—”
“We have time.” Dazai was speaking softly, in a tone that was quite unlike him. He was smiling, and the smile was unlike him, too, because it seemed to be genuine. But brittle, perhaps because of its very genuineness. He was not acting the buffoon right now. He was not trying to mess with Kunikida purely for whatever sadistic joy he got from screwing up Kunikida’s carefully structured schedule. This was something else. Kunikida—who was by no means unperceptive or foolish, even if he could be a little oblivious and naïve—recognized this at once and it put him on edge. He did not know what to do with a serious and vulnerable Dazai. He had not thought it was possible for Dazai to be serious or vulnerable, but the look on Dazai’s face now was open and unguarded and honest. Last night, he had looked much older than he actually was. This morning, he looked as young as he actually was.
“I wanted to watch the sunrise,” he said. “Sit down, watch it with me.”
Kunikida was more bewildered than ever. No Ability user capable of taking over someone else’s body would have any luck with Dazai, of course, but perhaps there was an Ability user in town capable of shapeshifting into other people. That would be a headache and a half. “And why would I do that?”
“You like watching the sunrise, don’t you?”
Kunikida frowned. He supposed he did, but he only allowed himself to stop long enough on his days off, and today was not one of his days off. Nor was it one of Dazai’s, not that that had ever seemed to matter much to Dazai. “I have to be at the office soon,” he said, mulishly. After a beat, he added, pointedly, “We have to be at the office soon.”
“We have time,” Dazai repeated. “Let’s watch the sunrise, even if just for a few minutes.”
Kunikida hovered dubiously for a beat, but at last, with a sigh, he capitulated and sat down on the bench next to Dazai. His partner, apparently satisfied, turned his gaze to the horizon.
Soft gold tinged the cottony layers of cloud over the bay, a halo of pale blue in the eastern skies, the last twinkle of stars not quite faded from the western horizon. This early, at the very beginning of the new day, the world seemed to Kunikida as fresh and pure, reborn to the dewdrops on the leaves and the delicate unfolding of flower petals. They were not the only people out at this hour, and after all, no city ever truly slept, but there was a brief interlude between the day and night when a delicate and peaceful quiet could be found even in the heart of metropolitan chaos. He breathed in cool, salty air.
On his days off, he often came out to sit and watch the sunrise, to savor the ephemeral peace not only in the city around him but in his mind. On one of those days, he had written in his notebook: A man is born when the sun rises, and he dies when it goes to rest. Then he went back and wrote the rest, a somewhat less aggressive version of the tirade he had directed at Dazai last night.
One should ever keep his vernal vigor like the morning sun rising from the horizon. He must get up at dawn, and see the sunrise; he must work until the sunset with heart and soul whatever his work may be. The sun rises every morning, so must he work every day. In doing so he will earn sweet sleep, and can see another sunrise the next day. One day with work well done makes a lifetime. We might say that a man is born when the sun rises, and that he dies when it goes to rest.
It was the next day that he had rewritten the one line he had read to Atsushi: One day with work well done makes a lifetime.
He had his notebook in his pocket, as he always did. He pulled it out now and opened it to the page on which he had recorded these thoughts as they came to him. His thoughts always organized themselves better on the page than in his head, as if they filed into orderly lines like dutiful schoolchildren as they passed through his pen.
He wrote down the thought that had just occurred to him, as he watched the waves turn under the lightening sky.
“Do any deed which you think to be as beautiful as you feel when looking at the sunrise,” Dazai murmured.
Kunikida looked up sharply. More than once, he had wondered if Dazai was not able literally to read minds, his ability to predict people was so uncanny. It felt like Dazai had plucked that thought right out of his head. He saw, however, that Dazai had only read what he’d written. Which was, of course, the much more logical conclusion to have drawn, but there was little about Dazai that fell into the neat confines of logic.
Like, for example, the awed expression with which Dazai looked down at those words. One hand tightened slightly in his lap, and Kunikida saw for the first time that he was holding something in that hand. When he opened his hand and looked down at it, Kunikida observed that it was a matchbook with the words Bar Lupin on it. Kunikida did not ask him about it. Like most things with Dazai, he let it be a mystery.
“We all have a duty,” Kunikida said, “to the world, and to ourselves, to always do the best we can do. We can’t be more than we are, but it is our duty to never allow ourselves to be less than we are. Just as the sun rises and begins anew, so must we, each and every day.”
Dazai closed his bandaged fingers around the matchbook and it disappeared into his pocket. There and then gone, like the image from a dream soon to fade.
“Do any deed which you think to be as beautiful as you feel when looking at the sunrise,” Dazai said again, and smiled. “I like that.”
Kunikida nodded in acknowledgment, not sure how else to respond. He was both embarrassed and pleased.
They sat in companionable silence and watched the day arrive. Kunikida reflected, vaguely, that sometimes it was nice to be in Dazai’s company. Sometimes it was very nice. He wouldn’t have minded, really, if there were more times when they could sit like this, side by side in shared silence.
Then he glanced at his watch, realized that nearly two hours had passed and he was officially forty-five minutes late for work, and he shattered the morning quietude with a dismayed cry.
“Goddammit, now my whole schedule is messed up! This is all your fault, Dazai!”