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Green on black; emerald and coal; a strip of white, bloodshot, a stain – not his, someone else’s; an enemy’s. Dazai has many enemies. One of them is now sleeping on the bed to his right, Dazai’s presence unbeknownst to him, his freckled face tranquil and somewhere far away; he’s wrinkling his nose in his sleep, as if offended or disgusted by something, or both, but never does he wake up, never does he look at Dazai, spot him there like a thief – that is to say, he never knows that Dazai is there, and that’s probably for the better.
Dazai keeps working his hands over the damp soil, threading his fingers through the roots, gloveless, each plant like a child. Chuuya’s windowsill is a desert of three cacti, a nightclub’s terrace with an overflowing metal platter serving as an ashtray, and a home to this one little palm tree that Dazai is currently replanting, concentrated as if defusing a bomb, his breath constricted from effort and barely escaping his lips, pursed thin. It’s harder to do it when his right eye can’t see; when Chuuya is not in his immediate field of vision. Dazai is not aware of all the traps.
If he were to wake up in the middle of it, in the gentle moonlight of the room, he would knock Dazai down sooner than he’d be able to utter a word in his defense. And what use would it be if all his defenses had always fallen short in the face of Chuuya’s preemptiveness, his mistrust, his lack of acquiescence? Chuuya would prevent Dazai from saving his life if it were him to pay the favor back to. A knife to Dazai’s throat, the one Chuuya always keeps in his pocket just in case, a final wish, a slide of his hand, a splash of blood, a grand finale. Dazai would bleed out right there, on the floor by Chuuya’s bed, next to the freshly replanted palm tree, one of them surviving the other. Each plant like a child.
Chuuya never cares for his plants, and yet, they never die.
He doesn’t need to know why.
When Mori gets less observant and Dazai – more bored, he tends to run away and wander on his own around Suribachi City, looking for trouble that’s not expecting his arrival. He roams there like a harbinger of death, skipping over the ruins and crushed bones, peeking into every grotto, every hideout, every half-assed hut to hide from the wind, every little hole in the ground, desperate for a treasure. The treasure can only be something new, unexplored, off the Mafia’s records, something he can discover like a new land, put it in the inner pocket of his coat, and keep it only to himself.
He’s flushed, short of breath, thirsty from boredom; the night descends, painting the crater he’s in piece-by-piece, stone-by-stone, oil on canvas, navy blue fading into dark gray fading into black – Suribachi City is forgotten by history, poorly illuminated, which can otherwise be read as – dangerous. But if danger ever scared Dazai, he wouldn’t be where he is, what he is, how he is. Besides-
The treasure is there.
In the pitch dark, he recognises it by smell – something both ashen and fiery, a flame extinguished by a wave of salty sea water; a whiff of cigarette smoke; a pinch of sweat; he finds it weirdly… attractive. Up to the point he feels the blade of a knife, rusty and crooked, put against the apple of his throat. He closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Smiles.
“Drop all your weapons,” the voice whispers right behind his back, tickling the nape of his neck.
Dazai looks down, and behind – as much as he can. “Are you tiptoeing..?”
“Shut,” the voice sharpens, solidifies; the blade presses tighter against his neck. “Your mouth. Weapons. Now.”
He just sighs, not a muscle in his body strained. “I don’t have any.”
He takes him into one of the hideouts – he’s quick, sneaky, and Dazai is blindfolded with a piece of cloth that smells like damp earth, which is why he’s left with nothing much but his ability to listen, analyze, and count – steps, turns. His gait is nervous, rushed, like he’s running from something, but his hand, dragging Dazai forward unceremoniously, is warm – the warmest one he’s ever touched, ridiculously burning.
In the hideout, he’s forced into a chair that creaks like an old piece of metal scrap, barely still holding together. It smells differently here – a whole mix of smells, all belonging to various people, but Dazai can only follow one distinctly and identify the movement and current position of his kidnapper by it. Flames are dancing on his face. They’ve lit a fire, and it is wise – Suribachi tends to get chilly at night, even during the hottest summers; there’s little air here, though, so it will die fast.
A careful, slow hand tugs down at the cloth over his eyes, pushing it all the way to his neck, and Dazai can finally see his whereabouts. He blinks once, twice. It is a typical hideout, arranged inside one of the underground grottoes created by the big bang; the only thing that makes it different from others he’s seen, though, is the inscriptions on the walls – poor handwriting, curse words and mottos, and a huge, rather uncanny drawing of sheep horns right over the entrance. Cave painting, he smirks, what a technique in their age.
“What’s so funny?” The voice calls, and Dazai immediately turns to its owner.
Leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed on his chest, he’s trying to appear taller than he is. His boys and girls are all around him, sitting on the cold ground quietly and studying Dazai with careful, wondering eyes. Predators watching their prey, waiting for it to take one wrong step; but the prey is already cornered, and there’s no way to run. Dazai is watching them too, looking up through the strands of greasy hair falling over his eyes, and his attention only lasts for so long. He ignores the question. “What’s your name?”
He’s always lacked manners. It’s easy – to lack something you were never supposed to have in the first place. In negotiations, he prefers to attack – not to retreat or, god forbid, to defend himself. Besides, right now, in this little cave, illuminated only by the fire dying out, he can barely see anyone he should be afraid of.
The treasure wrinkles his freckled nose, still slightly swollen – from what Dazai can discern – after a recent fight. In these lands, there is always someone to fight: for food, weapons, status, drugs, fame; not necessarily in that order. The man – boy – in front of him doesn’t look suited for a fight, far from it; all of his body (and there’s so little of it!) seems so fragile that it might crumble, ashen out, after one snap of a finger. His eyes, though, are telling a different story, which is why Dazai can’t force himself to look away from them.
“We are the Sheep. And my name is none of your concern,” the boy replies, his expression like he’s insulted by Dazai’s mere presence. Then, he suddenly pinches the bridge of his nose and looks down, hiding his gaze. Whispers, teeth clenched, “Shit. It sounded cooler in my head...”
One of the boys at his feet chuckles, bringing the back of his palm to his face. “Yeah. You clearly haven’t rehearsed it enough.”
They let Dazai go – alive, unscathed – on one condition: the Mafia doesn’t pry into the Sheep’s affairs, doesn’t try to get rid of them, lets them be and live their life of dirty strays. Dazai is no one to be making decisions on Mori’s behalf, but he says:
“Sure.”
He says:
“I also have a condition, though.”
Chuuya – that’s the name of the treasure he’s yet to put his hands on – scoffs, his eyeroll saying more than any words could. “You’re in no position to set demands here.”
Dazai’s reaction is belated – eyes running over his face, everything innocent and noble in it, trying to crack apart, decode, find out how in the world this child is where he is, wearing these torn, dirty clothes, looking at everyone like they’ve stolen his food, ruling over the strays he’s in no position to rule over. He waits until they are alone; until everyone else leaves – to go for a smoke, take a leak, or whatever other business they might have this late at night. Then, he speaks:
“Show me what your ability does.”
At first, Chuuya’s face forms a perfectly discernible grimace of absolutely not. He steps away, hands in his pockets, as if Dazai has just threatened him with a knife. Then, as he apparently realises he’s being entirely serious, no mockery in his voice whatsoever (and that’s a rarity!), he sighs, shakes his head…
And starts levitating.
The moment his feet take off the ground, Dazai gasps. His surprise is genuine, a little shamble of ruby inside his ribcage. Chuuya doesn’t stop there – still keeping his hands in his pockets, he makes a little spin in the air, turning himself upside down; Dazai’s composure – inside out; what they are to each other – backwards. Dazai opens his mouth in astonishment, but doesn’t dare to take a step forward, as if it can break the spell, ruin the magic forever. Like an unintentional explorer of the unknown, he keeps standing there, observing a wondrous little something that is Chuuya, hanging upside down in the air and staring back at him as if asking, are you entertained yet.
“What is yours?” He asks, voice quieter and less confident than before.
It’s time for Dazai to take his hands out of his pockets. He’s been holding them there the entire time, fiddling with all the little trinkets he carries around: a small bunch of change, a pack of matches, a scratched ID, a pack of chewing gum, his apartment key, a pinky-long bottle of painkillers because his head has been hurting more lately…
“Don’t get spooked,” he warns – god knows why.
He takes a step forward, shortening the distance between them, and taps the side of Chuuya’s neck with the tip of his pointer. He could go for his face, too, but it would be unacceptably intimate. He notices a slight shiver first, and then – Chuuya falls, unable to keep himself floating in the air anymore, gravity betraying him, – right into Dazai’s arms. “What the…” He breathes out, confused, eyes shifting up to meet Dazai’s, “... fuck.”
Dazai keeps holding him right there for some time – before Chuuya clicks back into reality and pushes him away with both hands, standing back on his own two. “Very funny,” he says, his displeased grimace hiding the sheer worry in his face. “Very.”
But no one dares to laugh.
They rule two different kingdoms.
Dazai orders the Mafia’s men around, men two, three, four times older than himself, listening to his every word, following every flick of his hand, too scared to disobey; Mori trusts him well enough to green-light his every decision without considering it or, sometimes, even hearing it first. Despite his young age, Dazai has more than half of Yokohama’s most powerful and feared underground organisation wrapped around his finger. No matter how diligently one might look for them, he has zero weaknesses.
“Again! Did you forget everything I taught you?”
Or he might have one.
He’s cooling off from Yokohama’s scorching August sun in the shadows of Suribachi City, sitting on the bare ground, leaning against one of the many ruins, and drinking from a can of sugarless soda. He’s watching Chuuya teach the Sheep to fire a gun, marching back and forth in front of a line of his soldiers like a thick-skinned, adamant officer, hands in his pockets the entire time. “Once more!”
He throws occasional glances at Dazai from a distance, as if to make sure he’s still there. His face says nothing the entire time. He’s one big mystery, though big is a stretch. No matter how hard Dazai tries, he can’t solve him – his tousled red hair, his bare, freckle-dotted face, the pout of his bitten lips, and how insultingly attractive he looks whenever he orders someone around. Not all the Sheep possess special abilities, which is why they need to learn how to defend themselves with other means. Dazai agrees to lend Chuuya his gun; and his bullets – however many he needs.
“Are you done yet?!” Chuuya shouts at him from where he stands, his index finger pointing at an imaginary watch on his left wrist.
… and his cans.
Dazai takes the last gulp of his soda, swallows, and nods. He throws the can at Chuuya, and he catches it effortlessly, immediately lining it up next to the other targets at their improvised shooting range. Yuan, a girl with bright pink hair, trembling like a leaf under Chuuya’s scrutinising glare, fires another shot. Some poor homeless man growls from his hideout:
“Hey! Quieter there! I’m trying to sleep!”
Chuuya ignores him. At Yuan, he just nods. “Again.”
Suribachi City is not the right place for lending someone your heart in exchange for an unspoken promise, but by the time Dazai does, he’s already too far gone to notice his fatal mistake. They rule two different kingdoms. Chuuya continues to solidify the Sheep’s position and authority in the underground, sometimes not sleeping for nights on end and thinking of ways to make his people stronger, more resistant, more reckless, more like himself. Dazai keeps watching him, not sleeping either; even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to shut his eyes.
During starless nights, they sit outside, by the fire. Chuuya is chewing on a lit cigarette in his mouth, watching the flames as they paint his face grenadine. “You,” he says, meaning Dazai, without sparing him a look. “Have cursed us.”
One of his boys returned – well, was carried – barely alive from a street brawl two days ago, his face distorted with bruises and blood; Yuan had missed all of her shots and got robbed in the middle of the night just the other day, as if there’s much to steal from the Sheep in the first place. They are short on food, ammo, meds, and virtually everything they need to survive around here, and there’s little Dazai can help with. While he does have plenty of influence in the Mafia, Mori is not blind – he will notice if he’s being stolen from.
Chuuya takes a drag of his cigarette before spitting it out. A cloud of smoke in the air forms his decision, and it’s the kind that stabs. “I don’t want to ever see you again.”
One thing no one tells you about treasures is how easily they dispose of themselves. You might think you’re holding the whole world in the palm of your hand, but when you try to close your fingers around it, there’s nothing but air. But Chuuya is a bit more than just air. If anything, he is smoke. And Dazai disagrees. He disagrees, although he never says it.
What strikes him as odd is that Chuuya does have a home. A small first-floor apartment in a half-abandoned building not far from Suribachi City, and each one of the Sheep seems to be occupying their own spot there, too, using it to shower, cook food, and sleep. Most of the time, they are roaming around outside, home meaning so little to them, like it doesn’t even exist; like it shouldn’t.
Chuuya’s bed is an old mattress on the floor, pushed all the way into the corner of a cramped room, which is also his kitchen. Dazai gets inside through the broken window, carefully bypassing the dying plants on the windowsill, and does all that he can: restocks his fridge with what he’s managed to buy at the nearest convenience store, replaces the almost used-up bar of soap in his shower, and makes his bed. He finds a shard of glass from a broken bottle next to his pillow, holds it in his hand for a second, and puts it back. He starts watering the plants, then.
As he does, his phone buzzes in the pocket of his black coat.
“I’m sorry to bother,” one of the Mafia’s men, someone whose name Dazai doesn’t even care to remember. “But we urgently need your intervention… sir,” this could never be not entertaining; after all, he’s barely eighteen.
“Give me five minutes,” Dazai responds absentmindedly and hangs up before hearing another word.
He starts rummaging in the kitchen drawers. He finds a pair of old, rusty scissors, which are still better than nothing, and starts cutting the dry and rotten leaves off Chuuya’s windowsill trees. He finishes by emptying his ashtray and turning off the bleak ceiling lights and exits the same way he entered.
He repeats the ritual thrice a week, whenever Chuuya is not at home (and he most often isn’t), and they never even come close to crossing paths. Dazai doesn’t care, but a part of him keeps itching for it, a kind of yearning stronger than a feral believer’s invocation for God, although when he pictures it in his head, he realises he’s run out of words to say – or he never had them to begin with.
At times, though, he miscalculates and gets in when Chuuya is sleeping peacefully in the corner of the room, face turned to the wall, and Dazai can only pray that his slumber is deep enough, possibly induced by the tranquilisers he once found in one of the kitchen cabinets while cleaning around, read the label, hummed, and put it back to where it belonged. His hunger for Chuuya’s presence close to him does get sated on nights like these, however short, and Dazai doesn’t care if he needs to tiptoe his way through them, walking on eggshells, breathing in half-breaths, scared to imagine what would happen if Chuuya suddenly woke up and saw him there, taking care of his life from the periphery he was left on like a burden.
They rule two different kingdoms. Each rules his own. No matter what happens, no matter what kind of trouble may befall them, they should never cross paths again. Chuuya has proclaimed his refusal clearly, dropping his faith, and with it – his weapon. But Dazai never wanted to fight him in the first place. Whenever he closes his eyes, alone in his room at night, he still remembers that first electric shock, first rush of thrill all the way to his fingertips, Chuuya’s body right behind his, its burning warmth seeping through Dazai’s clothes, his bandages, his skin. The way he was tiptoeing for a chance at Dazai’s life.
“So what are these Sheep kids about, anyway?” Mori’s voice makes him jump in his seat the other day, an empty bottle of pills he’s been fidgeting with falling out of his hand, the suddenly relaxed grip of his fingers. “Are you still hanging around?”
For the first time ever, Dazai finds himself at a loss for words when talking to his boss. Usually, he always has some kind of witty retort prepared, and often he doesn’t even need to think about it in advance – it’s just always there, blooming on the tip of his sharp tongue. Today, however, his tongue is tied.
“Well…” He clears his throat, his eyes glued to the empty desk he’s sitting at. His back is turned to Mori, but he feels him staring; he’s not a fool. “What about them..?”
He hates how small his voice suddenly sounds, how insignificant he feels, cornered like that, having spent all these months nurturing something that should have belonged only to him, something he believed belonged only to him, the skin, bones, and sheep horns, and a wildflower field of freckles and bruises in specks on Chuuya’s face – permanently young, permanently grumpy, which somehow doesn’t age him a day. The treasure is his. He can’t possibly share it – not even with someone who, by a bitter occurrence, owns his entire life.
“Their leader,” Mori speaks, his voice more stern than a minute ago, and all the bones in Dazai’s body start chanting a song; here it is, here it is, here it is. “Nakahara Chuuya. I want him in the Mafia.”
Dazai has never regretted the fact that the Port Mafia has eyes and ears everywhere in the city because so far, it has always played out in his favor. However, it looks like he’s been caught by his own trap, made a fool by his own joke. In Suribachi City, the Mafia’s eyes and ears have always been his.
“Think you can arrange it?”
Dazai has never really perceived anything as his. The word mine has been unknown to him, alien on his tongue; he’s never been in the position to say it, to possess people or things, because the one who has nothing also has nothing to lose. His enemies can’t possibly hit him where it hurts if he’s not in pain. So far, he’s entered every battle with nothing to fight over, which is why he’s always ended up on the winning side.
Chuuya has ingrained himself in Dazai’s memory so effortlessly like it’s breathing.
Suddenly, nothing else has ever made sense.
He comes back to Suribachi to find the Sheep practising with the gun, again. This time, Chuuya is standing right behind Yuan, holding her wrists in his hands, aligning her shots. Whenever he’s not helping her, he’s sipping on soda from a can, emptying one after another mechanically and setting the targets for another firing round, something that used to be Dazai’s job, and he rather enjoyed it.
Dazai smirks, sitting down on the ground where no one can possibly see him, and takes the box of matches out of his pocket. He strikes one and watches it burn out in his fingers. It takes Yuan exactly three burnt matches to finally hit an empty can. Chuuya helps her reload the gun, his calloused fingers working with the bullets so quickly, so mechanically, like he can do this with no effort, even in his sleep. It takes him six burnt matches to notice Dazai there, stumble upon him and freeze, the distance between them heavy with everything they’ve left unspoken.
Dazai purses his lips as he smiles and strikes another match.
My boss wants you in the Mafia.
The words are easy to say in his head, but absolutely unacceptable in reality.
I want you in the Mafia.
Impossible to pronounce out loud, exactly because this is true. In fact, Dazai doesn’t care much about where Chuuya is, as long as he’s somewhere around. He keeps returning to Chuuya’s apartment whenever he’s not there, whenever the lights are off, and his torn curtains are closed, spinning and tossing the words around in his head like little spheres in his own makeshift galaxy. He cuts the most significant part out. I want you.
Easy like taking a breath, but he’ll never dare – it’s not like they are something Chuuya wants to hear.
One of these nights, Dazai miscalculates. He’s been suffering from worsened insomnia ever since he met the Sheep, and consistent sleep is a rare guest in his life anyway, which is why he decides to pay Chuuya a visit. Something’s telling him that he won’t be there, some kind of gut feeling; usually, Chuuya returns home closer to dawn, since Suribachi City booms with life exactly at night, which is why Dazai has his rightful couple of hours to tend to his plants and leave.
Green on black; emerald and coal; his hands keep working on the leaves and stems after he shrugs off his coat, draping it over the back of a lonely chair in the corner of the room, and rolls up the sleeves of his wrinkled shirt. He’s humming a tune to himself, the only sound in the depths of the night, because it soothes the strange premonition he can’t explain. By now, he knows the placement of every single thing in Chuuya’s apartment, as he never cares enough to clean up or rearrange stuff around to free up more room. However, when he blindly reaches for the scissors and doesn’t find them where they’re supposed to be, his ill heart skips a bit.
“Looking for something?”
He turns around, catching sight of Chuuya’s silhouette. He’s standing next to the bathroom door, one shoulder leaning against the wall, and his wet hair is dripping onto his shoulders. He disarms Dazai with the sight alone – nothing but a stretched, oversized t-shirt barely covering his hips, and Dazai wants to put his mouth to every drop of water covering his bruised legs. He berates himself for it in his head, forcing his gaze to stay on Chuuya’s face.
My boss wants you in the Mafia.
“I…” he starts, hands gripping against the dusty windowsill. Damn, he hasn’t dusted in a while.
“You thought I didn’t notice?”
Chuuya approaches, his every step hammering a nail into Dazai’s coffin, before sitting down on the mattress in the corner and pulling his bare legs to himself, hugging his knees and keeping them in the vice of his arms. He’s disarmed Dazai twice now. One would imagine he was there to attack.
My boss wants you in the Mafia.
The words keep spinning around in Dazai’s head; they won’t go away. “Your plants were dying,” he says instead, pointing at the trees he’s been planting and replanting by Chuuya’s bed. The least he could ever do. “It was a shame.”
“You know what else is a shame?” Chuuya frowns at him, gaze sharper than his knife. “Breaking into other people’s homes, that is.”
Dazai doesn’t intend to fight him on this one. “I know,” he says, and does something he could never imagine having enough guts to do. He approaches Chuuya, sitting down next to him on the bed, and watches him immediately move away, as far as he can, until his shoulder blades meet the dirty wall. “Are you scared of me?”
Chuuya’s frown is now all over his face. “No,” he replies, and he seems to be telling the truth. “I’m just not used to…” He rummages for the word for some time, pursing his lips. “Care.”
His plants, always watered and cut. His fridge, always storing something to eat. His room, always aired. His ashtray, always emptied. His clothes, always clean and folded in the chest of drawers by his bed. His shard of glass, used for self-defense on par with his knife, untouched next to his pillow. Dazai might have overstepped too many boundaries – but never with an ill intention. And Chuuya is not the kind to pray to, not when he can’t even save himself, but Dazai still does.
And so he sets the altar.
The mix of words in his head forms an entirely new sentence, something he doesn’t have enough time to think over. “I want you in the Mafia.”
Chuuya’s eyes widen, but only for a second; then, he chuckles and laughs, a hoarse, bitter laugh. “You know I can’t possibly just leave the Sheep be, right?”
Dazai tilts his head to the side, genuinely befuddled. “Is that the only thing stopping you?”
This must have caught Chuuya off guard. He breaks eye contact, tightening the embrace on his knees, and clears his throat. “Can we talk about something else?” He asks into the emptiness in front of him. “Please?”
They might rule two different kingdoms, but every kingdom can be a burden as much as a blessing. Dazai understands it like no one else.
“We don’t have to talk at all.”
They look at each other at the same time. It’s not really relevant who leans in first.
What they do to each other’s mouths is balancing between a kiss and a bite. His teeth sinking into a handful of pomegranate seeds, Dazai tastes Chuuya’s tongue with his own, hot and tart, April melting into June, August melting into November; it’s warm, then cold, then warm again. Chuuya’s icy fingertips touch Dazai’s ribs under his shirt, and he shudders, burnt by this sudden winter, a rush of shivers on the back of his neck.
“Relax,” Chuuya whispers into his mouth, though he’s the one to talk. When he leans in again, it feels like a crime, and maybe it is. Dazai pleads guilty just to go and commit another one.
The sin in his arms is alive, breathing, heavy and light at the same time; Dazai threads his hands through the locks of his hair, lets them touch the scars, the calloused pads of his fingers, the absence of prints. Clocking in at the Port Mafia headquarters, he has to swipe the card every time. Not a single sensor in the entire building recognises his hand anymore.
Chuuya does.
When they lie down, fully undressed, in his home of a bed, Dazai lets his hands wander everywhere they can reach. He’s taken off some of his bandages, trying to even the score. What he likes about Chuuya is that he can’t be taken aback by scars, not even the deepest of them; it’s like he’s already seen everything one might deem the worst. Eventually, Dazai’s fingers end up trapped under the waistband of Chuuya’s underwear, the elastic just half a size too tight on him, leaving a reddening imprint on his skin, just over his hip bones, splitting his body in half. Dazai puts his lips to the unexplored land of his body, lacking a map, the last border he hasn’t yet crossed.
He looks up, eyes soft, begging, and watery. Chuuya meets him halfway; he always meets him there. “May I?” In a whisper.
He nods, wary and terrified.
Dazai takes him in his mouth.
This is also an action of claiming something, someone you are not ready to share. I want you in the Mafia. This is Dazai’s decision. Not Mori’s. Not anyone else’s. Chuuya is a gem that Dazai pockets, intending to keep it away from the eyes of the world. And the altar he sets is only his to pray at. If there’s anything in this rotten, ruined, corrupted city that can belong only to him – god – let it be the king of the Sheep.
They make love the entire night, sleepless, starved. Chuuya bites Dazai’s skin like he wants to claim him for generations to come, like owning him is all that matters, and Dazai can only be glad that his sentiment is mutual. Chuuya leaves burning marks on his neck, over the apple of his throat, which he used to threaten with a knife, across the line of his bare collarbones, and Dazai lets him. He lets him, lets him, lets him. As if there’s any other way.
At the crack of dawn, they are lying down, breathless, naked, staring at the dirty ceiling. Dazai keeps guessing how many wonders Chuuya is yet to offer to him – if only he takes him by the hand and agrees to go wherever he goes.
“The Mafia, huh?” Chuuya breaks the silence with a smirk. “What use can you guys possibly have of me, anyway?”
Dazai’s reasoning is more selfish than not, which is why he doesn’t offer it.
He gives Chuuya a day to think it over. He would give him more if he could, but impatience is the mother of greed. Or vice versa.
The truth is, by agreeing to join the Mafia, Chuuya would also agree to get corrupted to the bone. And the worst part is that it’s the best Dazai can offer. What else can he offer? Himself? The price is too low, but the stakes are too high. Everything he’s ever had hinges on a promise of a better life, but the only good thing that’s happened to him in a while was meeting the king of the Sheep.
When Chuuya finally gives him an answer, it’s somehow both better and worse than their first meeting, the blade of the knife pressed against Dazai’s unprotected throat. “I’ll go with you,” he decides, dropping his half-smoked cigarette on the ground and putting it out with his foot.
They are watching the Sheep practise their shots. This time, Chuuya is not there to guide and control them, and they still flawlessly hit every target. Dazai’s heart hitches with every bullet fired, but he doesn’t let it show. His neck is still burning from all the marks left by Chuuya’s mouth, but the bandages are covering this battlefield from the rest of the world, only for Dazai to know that it is there.
Some kingdoms are meant to fall mid-battle. Others are given away without a fight.
Chuuya’s fist bumps against Dazai’s in the air, sealing the promise.
There is one kind of kingdom that can be given away in exchange for a home.