ikolaiigh

[ikolaiigh]

ᡣ𐭩 JUDGMENT BY THE HOUNDS

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: dazai has an encounter with someone who is supposed to be dead, and now he's somehow left in an even worse position than he was before—and he didn't even know that was possible. if there's one thing that's always rung true in his life, it's that things can always get worse.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: SORRY GUYS IM SO LATE BUT I HAD AN INTERACTION WITH MY FAV COSPLAYER THAT HAD ME SO FLUSTERED I FORGOT I WAS POSTING TONIGHT LOLLLLLLL. anyway!!! enjoy the chapter, the first scene was genuinely one of my all time favs to write!!! i'm going to be responding to comments from the last chapter, last week's one shot, and this chapter this weekend! so sorry its taken me so long to respond wahhhh. also i didn’t research the whole mayoral system in japan LOL so i based removal process mostly on US mayoral removal process. reblogs and comments always appreciated!!

GENERAL WARNINGS: fem!reader, port mafia boss!reader, civilian!dazai, ptsd, mentions of past war crimes, mentions of alcoholism, temporary amnesia, dazai is mentally unstable, so is reader, both of them are struggling LOL, grieving (reader), a bit of suicide ideation (that's a given from dazai, a little bit from reader too tho), as always: reader is part of the mafia, expect mafia behavior from her, she is not a good person.

SEE: THE LAND IS INHOSPITABLE (BUT ARE WE?) SERIES MASTERLIST

What the fuck?

Dazai stares at a dead man. 

A living man? 

A living man who should be dead. 

Mori Ougai is very much alive, although Dazai is struggling to comprehend it. His lips part to say something, but he can only blink and shake his head. He’s too confused to even be angry at the sight of the man who ruined everything for him. The silence stretches too long, and Dazai knows he should be the first one to speak. He needs to demand an answer before Mori can get in the first blow.

“What are you doing here?” Dazai finally demands. “How the fuck are you alive?”

Mori clicks his tongue mockingly. “Language, Shuji-kun,” he chides. “There are children around.”

Dazai blanches. He’s not sure if he’s more disgusted by the use of his birth name or shocked by the implications of Mori speaking it. Does Mori remember him? How is that possible? How is he alive? Dazai’s mind spins as he grasps for answers, but he doesn’t even know where to start. You killed Mori, but somehow he’s standing right in front of Dazai, so that means you didn’t kill him, obviously, and if he’s aware of Dazai, then you didn’t even wipe his memories? So then what was the point of pretending to kill him? What was the point of the coup? What was the point of wiping your memories of him? Of erasing him from everyone’s minds? 

Dazai suddenly feels nauseous. He’s not sure if he’s sick with anger, frustration, or insecurity. Maybe all three. Anger at you for lying to him, frustration at never understanding the whole situation no matter how hard he tries to, insecurity because does this mean you erased him from your life for no reason other than wanting him gone?

Not to protect him, but because you were sick of him.

No, Dazai thinks, trying not to let his throat swell with hurt. No, he’s misunderstanding something.

Do you even know that Mori is alive?

Mori sighs dramatically. “You were indeed the last person I expected to find me here, Shuji-kun. How unfortunate. Come, boy. I may as well make use of you.”

Dazai doesn’t move when Mori leaves and disappears down the left corridor. He doesn’t know if he should follow him at all, and the only reason why he’s considering it is because he desperately wants—needs—answers. 

There’s no way that you know Mori is alive. You can’t, Dazai knows you. You weren’t faking the grief you felt. You think Mori is dead, which means… did someone in your inner circle betray you? The memory manipulator—Repin—he had to have played a part in the betrayal. Who else? Tolstoy? Dazai knows you trust Tolstoy with your life, and he also knows you gave Tolstoy a seat at the executive table. And Chuuya? Chuuya is the only one who retained any memories of Dazai. Does he also know about this?

Dazai has no desire to follow Mori, but if there’s a rat in your inner circle working against you…

He finds himself moving up the stairs before he can stop himself, dread pooling in his stomach. At the top of the stairs, the corridor splits into two. Mori had gone left, but Dazai hesitates, looking down it carefully before finally exhaling, feet dragging against the carpet as he makes his way to where Mori disappeared.

This is a bad idea, he thinks, swallowing thickly. The last time Dazai saw Mori, he was trying to convince you to kill him. For all he knows, he’s about to finish what you couldn’t, but he’s not… scared. Not even nervous. He realizes that he’s angry.

Sure, he’s resentful because of everything that happened to him because of Mori, but his anger is new. Dazai is angry that Mori has been hiding out here for months, letting you grieve him, making you mourn him, leading you to believe that you killed him. That your father’s blood is on your hands. Sure, Dazai wasn’t innocent in everything that led up to the shit show that took place seven months ago—he made dumb decisions, and those dumb decisions ended up backfiring on you, but it was Mori who betrayed you by kidnapping him and forcing you to choose.

When he enters the room at the end of the corridor, Mori is standing behind the desk, hands behind his desk and an amused expression on his face. Even standing in a rickety office, dressed in a casual button-up, without the long black coat and the burgundy scarf draped around his neck, he still looks ever the mafia boss he used to be. Dazai was confused and intimidated the last time he was on the opposite side of a desk from him—not this time.

“You’re thinking very hard, Shuji-kun,” Mori says with a too-pleasant smile. “I can practically hear the gears grinding from here. How exhausting that must be for you.”

That name again, Dazai thinks bitterly, biting his tongue to stop himself from snapping at Mori, which is clearly what the man wants from the way he watches Dazai expectantly. Not now, he’ll just have to deal with the name, because he needs answers before anything else.

“You let her think you’re dead,” Dazai says flatly instead of rising to the bait. “She’s a mess. She’s mourning you. She thinks she killed you. And you just—”

To his credit, Mori does look ashamed for a moment. He looks away, inhaling deeply; he seems to be collecting his thoughts, a grimace spreading across his face before it smooths back out. He raises his eyebrows at Dazai mockingly, but his lips are too taut at the corners to fully embrace the haughtiness. 

“Shuji-kun,” he says with faux-sympathy. “You must know by now what this line of business is like. You—”

“No,” Dazai cuts him off immediately. “No, you don’t get to say that. Have you even bothered to see what you’ve done to her? Do you even care—”

The words come out way more resentful than Dazai intends for them to. 

Resentful, and maybe a little envious, because Mori gets to be mourned by you, whereas Dazai was just wiped from your memory, completely forgotten. How is any of this fair? The bastard that ruined everything gets to live after everything he did, he gets to be mourned, and Dazai is just… he’s nothing. 

“Watch yourself, Shuji-kun,” Mori says, voice low and threatening, silencing Dazai, who doesn’t expect the abrupt change in demeanor from the collected man. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with her. This was a necessary sacrifice. Anyway, I wouldn’t go throwing stones in glass houses. Don’t forget who it was that set the events of seven months ago in motion.”

Dazai scoffs. “I didn’t set anything in motion,” he says, raising his chin. “I had no idea who I was. You put everything in motion when you decided I was some sort of threat to the Mafia.”

Mori gives Dazai yet another mocking smile—this one pisses Dazai off more than the last, because it’s too complacent. Amused. Like he’s dealing with an unruly child, and it’s endearing watching him protest the way he is. The second time in less than twenty-four hours that someone has looked at him like this.

“Shuji-kun, you were a threat to the Mafia whether you were aware of your identity or not,” Mori hums, tilting his head to the side. “I’ve been preparing her to take over after me for fifteen years, and the moment you came into the picture, she threw all of the lessons I taught her away. She hardly knew you for two weeks, and she started a war with one of the biggest Yakuza syndicates in Japan for you. She put everything we built at risk for a boy she barely knew. You have been a threat since the moment you met her.”

Dazai’s jaw tightens at the accusation. He says tightly, “I made her happy.”

“You did,” Mori agrees to his surprise, “and it would’ve gotten her killed.”

“You don’t know that,” Dazai replies. “You—”

“I do,” Mori interrupts. “The only things guaranteed in our line of work is death. One way or another, something would have happened to you, and it would have killed her. Just like it almost killed her four years ago when her partner died.”

“Just like it’s killing her now?” Dazai asks snidely, relishing in the way Mori falters. “Anyway, what right do you have to talk about him? You were the one who got him killed, weren’t you?”

“Is that what she thinks?” Mori asks after a moment, an odd expression on his face as he looks down at his desk. Dazai’s brows furrow, scrutinizing Mori’s expression as he tries to figure out if the man is being genuine. “I had nothing to do with Itou Asahi’s death, but I made sure when it happened that we didn’t come out empty-handed.”

The truth?

Dazai presses his lips together as he tries to comprehend the implications of what Mori said. You’re certain that Mori played a hand in Itou’s death, going as far as to blame yourself for it because you were the one to tell Mori about Itou’s wishes for you. If Mori wasn’t involved, and you’re certain someone was, then who was it?

“No? He didn’t distract her like I did?” Dazai asks coolly. “You didn’t think she would be better off if he were gone? Maybe cut a deal with the government to make it happen?”

“Let’s make one thing clear,” Mori replies, matching his tone. “If I wanted Itou Asahi dead, she never would have been suspicious of my involvement.”

Dazai wonders if that’s meant to be some sort of threat, but he doesn’t budge, raising his chin when Mori levels a challenging stare at him. After what feels like an eternity, Mori lets out an exhausting sigh.

“I did not have anything to do with that boy’s death,” he repeats. “He was… stabilizing for her. I considered it, yes, but came to the realization that his death would do more harm than good.”

Dazai rolls his eyes hard. “How compassionate of you,” he says, voice dripping with sarcasm. 

Mori hums like he doesn’t catch the sarcasm. “Elise is dear to me,” he murmurs more to himself than to Dazai, “but I raised that girl. Do you know how I found her, Shuji-kun?” 

Mori lifts his head to look at Dazai, an oddly serious expression on his face. Dazai suddenly feels unsure. He vaguely knows of your past with him. He knows Mori saved you during the Great War, pulled you out of a warzone when your village had been massacred, but he has a feeling he’s about to hear more than he bargained for.

“She lived on the mainland, where the heart of the Great War was until Tokoyami Island appeared,” Mori continues when Dazai doesn’t respond. “There were seven different factions with encampments in the mountain range her village was in. The Japanese military was one of them.”

“Your regiment,” Dazai says.

“How astute,” Mori replies dryly. “It was before I was promoted to head physician for the infantry corps. Her village went mostly under the radar; it was underneath the trees in a valley. They got lucky, but luck always runs out. The commander of my regiment was the first to see the smoke—we went to check it out. We smelled the rot of corpses before we were even in sight of the village. They must’ve been dead for days before we got there.”

Dazai swallows thickly, shoving his hands in his pockets as Mori looks down at something on his desk. He can’t see what it is from where he’s standing, but it looks like a picture frame. 

“The village was small compared to most, but you’d be surprised how many people five hundred is when all of the corpses are piled together before your eyes,” Mori says quietly, frowning to himself. Dazai knew this much—he knew your village was massacred, but bile still rises in his throat. “Do you know where I found her?” 

“The center,” Dazai says after a few moments, recalling what you told him, voice too hoarse for his liking. He tries to subtly clear his throat, but he doesn’t think Mori even noticed.

“The bottom,” Mori corrects.

“What?” he breathes out.

“The bottom,” Mori replies. “Our commander ordered us to bury all of the bodies instead of leaving them to rot without proper burial. He was more sentimental than most—otherwise, they would’ve just been burned. It took hours to get to the bottom of the pile, but we did. She was stuffed at the bottom—wasn’t moving, I could hardly tell she was breathing. I didn’t realize she was alive until she blinked when I tried to pick her up.”

Dazai tries to imagine it. He tries to imagine you at the bottom of a pile of corpses. He tries to imagine what Mori had seen back then. You would have been so small. Seven years old, eight max. Small and brittle at the bottom of a mountain of corpses. He can almost see it—your tiny frame wedged between broken limbs, crushed beneath bodies that had once been your neighbors, your friends, maybe even your family. Sheer luck is the only reason you survived; you should have suffocated, but maybe there was a small pocket of air. He tries to imagine the way the stench would have clogged your throat every time you tried to breathe—the way the flies and maggots must have already started their work.

He doesn’t realize he gags until his hand flies to his mouth to hold back the bile that threatens to expel from his mouth.

“She didn’t cry,” Mori says softly. “Didn’t scream. Didn’t even flinch when I grabbed her and pulled her out of there. She didn’t speak for a month. Didn’t acknowledge anyone’s presence for weeks. Our commander wanted me to send her back to Japan—‘the warfront was no place for a child,’ he said, but she never would’ve survived on her own back in the real world, not after what happened to her. So I kept her with me. I carried her through the mountain ranges on my back. Had to spoon-feed her to force her to eat. She couldn’t sleep unless I was there with her. She couldn’t handle being in closed spaces or underneath the ground.”

Dazai’s fingers are shaking. He’s glad he stuffed his hands in his pockets. 

“Most children, they wail until their throats bleed when they have nightmares. She never made a sound, but I would be startled awake by the shaking. She trembled so badly that I thought she would rattle her bones apart,” he murmurs to himself, shaking his head. “All this to say, I have made very questionable decisions in my life, but I have never made one that I thought would harm her more than it would help. I don’t care for much, Shuji-kun. I wish to see Yokohama thrive, safe from foreign and domestic threats. I wish to see the Port Mafia on the top of the world’s criminal underworld. And I wish to see her…”

He trails off, brows furrowing as a contemplative expression crosses his face. For once, there’s no sharpness to his voice. No calculated edge. He sounds… tired, almost.

“Alive,” he finally finishes, gaze fixed somewhere beyond Dazai. “I wish to see her alive. She functions much like a robot. She follows orders better than any soldier and will complete any task given to her no matter what the cost. But she doesn’t live. She doesn’t think for herself, no matter how much I try to push her in that direction. I’ve tried countless times to get her to—I’ve tried guiding her in that direction, I’ve tried placing her in competition with other proteges of mine, I’ve threatened her, I’ve praised her, I’ve been gentle and harsh. I’ve tried so hard that she became resentful toward me for it, but nothing gets her out of the shell she’s locked herself in. I let things go on between the two of you as long as I did, because I thought it might be the push she needed.”

“Wasn’t it?” Dazai asks, throat tightening as he forces himself to speak. “I would say faking my death and the coup were ‘against your orders.’”

“But at what cost?” Mori questions, tilting his head to the side. “I want her living, Shuji-kun, but not at the cost of her life. You were becoming more harm than help. You were putting her and the Port Mafia in danger. So you needed to be removed from the equation.”

Dazai’s eyes immediately narrow at the phrasing. Removed from the equation—that could be another way of saying killed, but it was oddly vague. Too vague. Mori’s lips curl into a knowing smile, and a pit forms in Dazai’s stomach.

“You never expected her to kill me,” he realizes quietly. “This was all your plan from the beginning.”

“Death, erased, what really is the difference? You’re out of the picture, aren’t you?” Mori says with a too-easy smile. Rage eats at Dazai’s heart, his bones, his soul, but he pushes it away. He still needs more answers. “Everything has gone exactly how I wanted it to.”

“Why?” Dazai asks tightly. “Why? How could this possibly help her more than it hurts? Have you seen her lately?”

Mori hums, fingers thrumming against his desk as he tilts his head to the side as if considering his words. “What do you know about Leo Tolstoy?”

There it is. Confirmation that Tolstoy is part of whatever this scheme is. Dazai’s gaze sharpens onto Mori, who is still giving him an inquisitive look.

“He’s one of her closest confidants,” Dazai says dryly, “and maybe a traitor.”

“Please,” Mori scoffs. “That man would rather die than betray her.”

“And yet, he’s plotting with you,” Dazai accuses.

“More help than harm,” Mori sings like the answer is obvious, smiling mysteriously. “Do you know what Tolstoy’s ability is, Shuji-kun?”

Dazai doesn’t like admitting not knowing things, so he just stays silent, which Mori rightfully takes as an answer.

“It is called War and Peace. It’s a type of… precognitive ability. Tolstoy can pick any conceptual desire, and his ability will provide him with the series of steps required to attain that desire. It gives him multiple paths, some more likely than others to turn out victorious,” Mori explains. 

Dazai frowns. “How does that work? How does he ever lose anything then? How did the Three Deaths essentially become a branch of the Port Mafia?”

“Originally, I was going to send Chuuya-kun to Russia when the Three Deaths started getting… froggy at our borders. I thought our most powerful ability user would be enough to deter the Three Deaths from fighting back, but to my surprise, they continued militarizing even when we ensured intel reached them that Chuuya-kun would be the one to handle them. The ability gives Tolstoy paths to victory, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful in implementing those plans, whether they don’t have the strength, the means, or simply make a mistake.”

“So Chuuya went there and kicked their ass?” Dazai asks dryly. “How riveting.”

“Actually, no,” Mori corrects with a smile. “Our lovely hime asked to be the one sent instead of Chuuya-kun. I was against the idea, but she insisted. Imagine my surprise when she arrived and Tolstoy immediately had his men stand down. Six paths to victory against Chuuya-kun turned to zero against her. Force might win battles, but persuasion wins wars. Chuuya-kun might’ve won in combat against the Three Deaths, but they would never stop fighting and undermining us. It was her who ensured that.”

Dazai somehow isn’t surprised by that. He heard what you did to Professor Ui and how you handled Francis Fitzgerald. Dazai thinks that of all the abilities he’s seen—even Chuuya’s and Arahabaki—yours still has the potential for the most destruction. Because you can’t see the destruction yours causes, it’s the silent, invisible destroyer. You can toy with people’s emotions without them realizing it, weaving your intentions into theirs with the quiet ease of a shadow.

It’s not like anything he’s ever witnessed before. With Chuuya, there’s a clear form of attack. With Akutagawa and Atsushi, there’s a clear form of attack. But you… It’s the subtlety—you slip beneath the surface, like water carving through stone, changing everything in a way that’s too quiet to track until it’s already too late. It’s invisible and insidious; it doesn’t need brute force, it doesn’t even need presence. Just a few words and an emotion, and they’re halfway to whatever you want them to be.

“What does that have to do with why you did this?” Dazai asks, changing the subject. “Why you faked your death?” 

Mori studies Dazai for a moment. “Who do you think the real enemy is, Shuji-kun?” 

“I have a feeling that you’re going to tell me,” Dazai says dryly.

“Humor me,” Mori replies easily. “I want to see how good your intuition is.”

Irritated, Dazai wonders how exactly he’s supposed to know who the real enemy is when he has limited knowledge of the criminal underworld. It can’t be the government, that’s too obvious an answer. It’s not Fitzgerald, you played him like a fiddle. But then who? You’ve mentioned other organizations in passing, but who did you seem the most disturbed by?

Fitzgerald mentioned he had allies, referred to them as rats…

Rats, hm? That explains a lot, actually.

You looked beyond him, your expression was unreadable, but he could tell you were disconcerted by that knowledge. Is that it? The rats? But who were they?

“The rats,” he says quietly, and Mori’s eyes glitter with glee like he’s pleased with Dazai’s answer.

“His name is Fyodor Dostoevsky. His organization is called the House of the Dead, and its members are called rats,” Mori explains, fingers laced in front of him. Dazai is startled by the name of the man who approached him last night. “He is… something unlike anything we’ve ever faced before, and if we’re not careful, he won’t just spell the end of the Port Mafia or Yokohama.”

“What do you mean?” Dazai asks quietly.

“I need to be able to understand his goals and what he’s capable of,” Mori says instead of answering Dazai’s question. “To do that, I need to be able to go under the radar. Otherwise, he’ll figure out what I’m doing and ensure every lead I find is a dead end. He won’t think of tracking a dead man.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dazai had a feeling that he wasn’t just any ordinary person last night The way Mori speaks about him, though… He’s not just a rival of the Port Mafia, he’s a threat of an entirely different magnitude, and that is an… unsettling realization. This isn’t just another game of chess for Mori—it’s not power plays or manipulation—it’s about survival.

Dazai leans back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest. His gaze narrows as he tries to grasp what Mori is saying. “So you faked your death, made her suffer in grief and regret for seven months, to become invisible to Dostoevsky? To protect your moves from him?” 

Mori smiles faintly. “Exactly. If he thinks I’m dead, he won’t be able to anticipate my actions. If he doesn’t know I’m still active, I can move freely. But if he knows, I’ll be playing directly into his hands. She… she had to think I was dead, otherwise he would never.”

“What does he want?” Dazai asks. “Why is he such a threat?”

Mori’s smile falters for a brief second before he collects himself. “That, Shuji-kun, is what we have yet to figure out. He’s not like any other enemy we’ve faced. His goals are… unclear, and he has his rats in every major organization in the world. Whatever his goals are, he’s been working at them for years, he’s patient. He operates in the shadows, pulling strings with a subtlety even our lovely hime struggles to match.”

“And Tolstoy?” 

“He understands the threat of Dostoevsky better than anyone. He and Repin agreed to help me fake my death so that we could perhaps get the upper hand on him. It was a… trying conversation. He did not like the idea of going behind her back, but he knew this was necessary if he wanted us to stand a chance against that demon.”

Dazai exhales heavily, an unsure expression crossing his face as he looks down at the floor. He knows where this is leading—if you not knowing is necessary to maintain the illusion of Mori’s death, that means Mori needs to ensure Dazai’s silence on the matter. But Dazai can’t—he can’t lie to you about something like this.

Mori tilts his head to the side as if he knows exactly what Dazai is thinking, and Dazai stiffens.

“She cannot know,” Mori says, voicing his thoughts. “The moment she knows I’m alive, Dostoevsky will know.”

Dazai shakes his head. “I can’t keep this from her,” Dazai replies instantly. “No. I can’t—”

“You can’t,” Mori echoes, voice mocking. “You can’t what? Lie to her? Don’t make me laugh, Shuji-kun, you and I both know you’re well adept at lying to her face.”

Dazai tries not to let the shock show on his face, but he fails. He supposes that he should’ve assumed that Mori knows about what Dazai has been up to for the past month. His jaw tightens before he says, “You don’t know what—”

“I don’t know what I’m talking about?” Mori asks, amused. “I don’t know about your ties to the Armed Detective Agency? I don’t know that the Armed Detective Agency cut a deal with the government to try to knock the Port Mafia down a peg? I don’t know that they’re using you to get the information by getting close to her?”

Dazai doesn’t respond, throat spasming as he lifts his chin, swallowing thickly. 

“You’ll find that I know many things, Shuji-kun. Being dead has its perks. But as much as I find it quite ironic that you’ve stooped to doing exactly what I accused you of, there are more important matters at hand that we need to worry about,” Mori says, leaning forward a little. “Such as… What exactly do you plan to do with the information you got last night?”

Nothing, Dazai thinks with a frown. He hasn’t done anything with the information. It’s sitting back in his apartment. He spent all night staring at it after returning to his apartment. He threw up three times while considering bringing it to the Agency in the morning, and then, in typical Dazai fashion, he decided to be avoidant instead. So he chose to go to the address he found instead to stall the decision he inevitably has to make—more specifically, stall telling the Agency that he “didn’t find anything” after they were all counting on him to pull through.

“I haven’t done anything with it,” Dazai says after a moment, looking down. “I’m not going to. I just—I can’t… I can’t do that.”

“Hm,” Mori says, an odd expression on his face as he scrutinizes Dazai. He doesn’t look… pleased by Dazai’s words. Did he want Dazai to give the information over? But why? Just to be proven right? Or was it something else? “The Hunting Dogs cannot come to Yokohama.”

Dazai doesn’t physically react to that, but he does feel a bit unsure, biting his tongue as he waits for Mori to elaborate. When Mori realizes that Dazai has no inclination to respond, he lets out a heavy breath.

“Besides the fact that a conflict with the government would be… inopportune right now,” Mori says with a tight smile, “she has a… personal grudge against them. She will be reckless trying to get revenge if they end up coming here. We must avoid that at all costs.”

Dazai’s brows furrow. “Why does she have a personal grudge against them?” 

“The Hunting Dogs killed Itou Asahi.”

Dazai’s lips part to speak, but no words leave them. He blinks once, then twice, and looks down at the ground. Shit, Dazai thinks, glad that his hands are still in his pockets because his nails bite into his palms when he realizes what Mori is expecting of him. But Dazai can’t. He can’t cross that line. He can’t.

“I’m not going to hand over the transactions to the Agency,” Dazai says, shaking his head. When irritation flashes through Mori’s eyes, Dazai raises his chin. “I’m not. For all I know, you want me to hand it over because you want something to hold over my head so I can’t tell her that you’re alive. I don’t trust you, and I’m not doing anything you want me to.”

Mori sighs dramatically, turning his back to Dazai momentarily. “Shuji-kun, I thought you were smarter than this,” he murmurs. “Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about your relationship with her. My concern is keeping her alive, and if you cared about her at all, it would be yours to.”

“And crippling the Port Mafia is going to going to keep her alive?” Dazai demands, stepping forward. “We don’t even know if handing this information over to the government will stop the Hunting Dogs from coming here. Dostoevsky wanted me to do it too, shouldn’t we maybe not play into his hands?”

“A necessary sacrifice,” Mori says, looking over his shoulder at Dazai briefly. “Concessions must be made for the Port Mafia’s survival. She did well expanding its reach over the past seven months, it gives us leverage we can use now against the government. Give up something we never originally had, and we can appease them. Appeasement buys time. Time buys survival. Even just a few days can turn the tides of war.”

Dazai exhales slowly, shaking his head as he looks away. “So you want me to do the dirty work? You want me to be the one to betray her, and you can keep your hands clean?”

Mori gives him a wry smile. “My survival is a betrayal to her,” he says quietly. “Regardless, Shuji-kun, I want you to answer this honestly: do you love her?” 

“Of course, I love her,” Dazai says immediately with a scoff. “I—”

“Then you are going to do what it takes to give her the best chance at coming out of this conflict intact. Even if it means betraying her,” Mori says coldly, and Dazai looks away. “I do not know if giving up Walter Lippmann’s office will be enough to completely deter the Hunting Dogs from coming to Yokohama, but it will buy us time, and time is the one thing we are all desperately running out of. Dostoevsky will make his first move as soon as the Hunting Dogs arrive in the city. We need to understand what his motives are and what he’s capable of before that.”

“You’ve had seven months to figure this out,” Dazai says tightly. “How much could you possibly figure out in however many weeks or days this might buy?”

“As I said, you’d be surprised how quickly the tides could turn in even just a few extra hours,” Mori murmurs.

Dazai feels sick as he looks away. “I don’t—”

“In exchange for your cooperation and silence regarding my survival, I will direct you to Tolstoy and Repin,” Mori interrupts, an oddly… expectant expression on his face as he levels his gaze back onto Dazai. This is some sort of test, and Dazai’s stomach sinks at the realization. “The painting that contains her memories of you will be destroyed. She will remember you.”

All of the breath whooshes from Dazai’s lungs as he stares at Mori. The painting—the whole reason why he agreed to do all of this. He wanted to get his hands on the painting, and now, it’s being handed to him on a silver platter. All for the slim price of betrayal. 

Is it worth it?

Is betraying you worth ensuring you remember him? Will you forgive him? Will you hate him? Will you let him come home? Dazai isn’t sure, but he is sure that he can’t keep doing this. The past month… it’s been nice, but it’s also been lies, and he cannot keep living a fucking lie. Not with you. He gets so bitter, so angry, so depressed, he can’t keep doing it. So even if you hate him or cast him out, he needs you to have your memories of him back.

One more betrayal in exchange for finally being able to stop the lies. 

But would it really stop the lies? Or would it just start a whole round of new ones? The painting in exchange for his silence—how the fuck is he supposed to keep Mori’s survival from you? How is he supposed to look you in the eye and pretend that the father you’re mourning, the father you thought you killed, is dead when he knows very well that he’s alive?

Dazai thinks that’s an issue for future Dazai to handle. Mori can go fuck himself for all Dazai cares—as soon as Dazai gets what he wants, all bets are off. 

But first, Dazai needs to get what he wants. He needs the painting. 

“Okay,” Dazai finally says, but the word tastes like ash on his tongue. “Okay. This week. I want the painting this week.”

“After the transactions are handed to the government,” Mori agrees, purple eyes sharp and calculating. “Then, I will ensure you get your painting.”

“Deal,” Dazai says quietly. “I’ll do it.”

Mori lets out a huff of laughter that makes Dazai’s skin crawl.

“I underestimated you, Shuji-kun,” Mori murmurs, amused. “I’m eager to continue our partnership.”

As if, Dazai thinks.

“Dazai,” he finally corrects, voice hard. “My name is Dazai.”

Mori’s lips curl up into a too-pleased smile. To Dazai’s surprise, Mori inclines his head and echoes, “Dazai-kun.”

For some reason, it makes the pit in Dazai’s stomach grow even more. 

---------

Your phone has been off for an hour, and you haven’t spoken a word to Albatross since you got in the car with him. He’s angry, you can tell from the way his knuckles are white around the wheel, but he has yet to broach the elephant in the room. Car. Whatever. But you know it’s only a matter of time, and since you’re reaching your destination, that ‘matter of time’ is any second now. 

“You can’t run away from this,” Albatross finally says, voice tight, still staring ahead. He can’t even bring himself to look at you, and that’s how you know he’s much angrier than he’s letting on. “You hear me, you cannot run away from this.”

“I’m not running away from anything,” you reply coolly, gaze sliding away from him so that you can look out the window. 

“No?” Albatross asks dryly. “You got your phone off and you’re making me drive you out to the countryside—”

“Beachside,” you correct absently.

“Same shit,” Albatross snaps. From the corner of your eye, you see his head snap to the side to look at you. “You’re fucking running when everything is on fire. Lippmann’s on the chopping block, he needs—”

“The last thing he needs is for me to come running to his rescue,” you say sharply, gaze cutting to the side to look at him. “Do you want me to give weight to accusations, Albatross? I understand your brain is hardwired for the more… hands-on aspects of the Mafia, but surely even you must realize there is nothing we can do about this right now without pulling the trigger on the gun pressed against the back of his head.”

“You’re running,” Albatross repeats, louder this time. “You did this when the Guild showed up, too. You ran to the beach house—”

You slam your hands against the dash of his car, finally losing your temper. You just want some peace, but clearly that’s too much to ask. The past two days have been a shit show—Lippmann is getting torn up by the media and the Ministry of Justice is knocking on his office door every hour of the day. He’s facing threats of removal from the governor of the Kanagawa Prefecture, and you know the charges will be on his desk any day now. He’s stubborn, so he’ll fight, and he might win—he’ll probably win—but when he does, conflict with the Hunting Dogs will be imminent, and you need to know what you’re going to do because you can’t be scrambling when they’re on your doorstep.

But you can’t fucking think when Klaus, Chuuya, Iceman, Doc, Piano Man, Akutagawa, Atsushi, Hirotsu, Kouyou, everyone is coming and demanding to know what the plan is. You don’t know what the goddamn plan is and no one is giving you the space to think. 

“I’m not fucking running,” you say again, voice rising. You don’t usually yell, and you suppose that’s why Albatross goes quiet. “I am not running, Albatross. I need to go somewhere I can think without people barging into my office every five seconds. Is that fucking alright with you? If Lippmann is thrown out of office, it’s only a goddamn matter of time before the Hunting Dogs come down on us—”

“What are you talking about?” Albatross demands. “Everyone’s saying that the only upside of the potential removal is that maybe now the government will back off. I—”

“The government will, but the Hunting Dogs won’t,” you say, shaking your head. “Even if Lippmann loses at his hearing and he’s actually removed, which I don’t think he will, the Hunting Dogs will come anyway. I know it.”

“How?” Albatross asks quietly. “What makes you think that?”

You exhale as you lean back in your seat, tired. “The Hunting Dogs are in Dostoevsky’s pocket,” you tell him. “I don’t know if it’s Fukuchi Ouchi himself or one of the other members, but I know that a member of the Hunting Dogs is his informant, and I know that he’s waiting on them to make their move on Yokohama so that he can make his. They will come here, Albatross, and we need to be ready, I need to be—”

You cut yourself off abruptly, looking away. The Hunting Dogs are the only ones in Japan’s top military units you don’t actively try to embed yourself in. All of the others, you’ve made a point of getting close to at events or inviting to dinners, because it’s good to have friends in high places in all parts of the government—you never know what might come in handy. But not the fucking Hunting Dogs.

Your throat tightens as you take a deep breath, hands smoothing out against the fabric of your slacks. Your lashes flutter shut, you see a flash of metal, a splatter of blood. There’s something—someone—heavy in your arms, and now you can’t open your eyes because you’re scared who you might find laying in them. Dying in them.

You’re not ready to face them again. Not yet.

“Hey,” Albatross says softly. He reaches out to grab your wrist gently, dragging you out of your thoughts. You let out a shaky sigh as you look at him again. “If the Hunting Dogs come to Yokohama, we’re gonna fuckin’ bury ‘em, alright? For Itou. For you.”

“They won’t be like anyone we’ve ever gone up against,” you tell him quietly, gaze drifting to the window again. “We’ll have to be careful. Even if they do come here against government orders, they’re still backed by the government, and if we engage them in open combat…”

“Hey, look at me,” Albatross says, squeezing your wrist. You sigh as you look at him again. “We will handle them when they get here. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about those fuckin’ mutts. You worry about how the fuck the government got their hands on our bank statements. We’ve got a leak, doll, and we need to plug it before things start going down.”

“Yeah,” you reply, voice soft. “I know. I will.”

Maybe you are being avoidant, because you don’t even want to think about how exactly the government got their hands on your bank statements. You know how the government got their hands on them, but you don’t want to broach that subject. Once you do…

You shake your head again as you look out the window. You’re on the long, windy road to Itou’s beach house now. You need a night, maybe two, here to clear your head, and then you’ll head back to the city. Then you’ll be ready. Then—

“Stop the car.”

Albatross skids to a stop so suddenly that you would’ve gone flying forward had his arm not shot out to hold you steady. He gives you an alarmed look, reaching for his gun instinctively, but your gaze is trained out to the beach, where a too familiar figure stands looking out at the sea. 

Fuck.

What the fuck is he doing here of all places? 

“The fuck?” Albatross mutters, pulling out his gun. “Isn’t that the kid you brought to the event Friday night?”

“Mhm,” you say quietly, a lump forming in your throat as you stare out at him. 

You didn’t want to have to confront this yet, but what fucking choice do you have now? If this isn’t proof that all of this has been set up from the beginning… You’d known from the beginning that it was. You knew it in your heart, it was all too convenient and all too sudden, but you wanted to pretend. 

How does he even know about this place? Itou has kept it so far off the grid—only you, Chuuya, and Albatross should know about it. Does that mean it’s compromised? Does whoever Dazai works for know about this place? Is Dazai even his name?

“I knew it was him, but I still went looking for him at the cafe the last three mornings,” you say quietly. His back is still to the car, you wonder if he knows it’s there, if he’s waiting for you. You feel Albatross looking at you but your gaze remains trained on Dazai. “I still brought him up to my office. Left him alone in there. Let him leave knowing he took something.”

Albatross takes in a deep breath. “He’s the leak,” he realizes.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “And isn’t it so weird that I know this and am still reluctant to kill him?”

So weird, you think bitterly. So fucking weird. You’ve never had trouble pulling the trigger before. You pulled the trigger on Mori—the man who rescued you, the man who treated you like his own daughter—and yet this boy makes you hesitate. You’ve hardly known him for a month.

“Do you love him?” Albatross asks quietly.

“No,” you say, ignoring the tight feeling in your chest, “but I think maybe I could have with more time.”

“You don’t have to kill him,” Albatross says, voice soft. “Send him away. Tell him not to come back to Yokohama.”

“He’s the reason Lippmann might be facing time in prison,” you remind him.

“Lippmann will be fine,” Albatross disagrees, “and you know damn well he’d never want you to torture yourself by doing this again.”

“Give me your gun, Albatross,” you say instead. “While I’m out there, I need you to get in contact with Iceman. I have a… piece of leverage up in Kyoto that I can use against the Hunting Dogs. I need him to go get it for me. He’ll know what I’m talking about.”

His expression twists in disappointment, but he nods and places the gun in your hand. You don’t say anything else as you step out of the car and shut the door behind you. The bay breeze is cool against your skin and the rising sun sets a pretty glow over the bay, but all you feel is dread building in your stomach and the heavy weight of Albatross’s gun in your hand. Your feet drag against the sand as you make your way over to Dazai’s familiar figure in the near distance. 

He doesn’t turn to look at you, and he must know you’re approaching by now, but you don’t come to stand next to him. Instead, you stop behind him. You don’t know what to say or how you should go about handling this—a part of you wonders if you should skip the pleasantries and press Albatross’s gun to the back of his head, but the larger part of you aches to give him one last chance even though you know you shouldn’t. 

You hate that your heart is still clinging to him when you know what he’s done, and you hate that logic isn’t enough to overpower the traitorous thing in your chest. You slide the gun into your pocket very bitterly, and then say quietly, “I was waiting for you at the cafe the last three mornings. You didn’t come.”

Dazai doesn’t respond—you didn’t really expect him to, but you still hoped that he would.

“Kissing me the way you did and then running out on me was pretty heartless, you know?” you try again. Though you try to keep your voice light, you know it comes out strained, too close to pleading. You’re begging him to give you something to work with, something you can hide behind so you don’t have to confront the truth. “And then to not even show up at our cafe the next morning? So rude.”

Our. You didn’t mean to say that, you hope he didn’t notice, but you think he did from the way his shoulders tense and how he finally decides to speak.

“You kissed me,” Dazai finally says, voice too rough for comfort. You know in your heart how this conversation is about to turn, and you still can’t brace yourself for it. 

“You kissed me back,” you remind petulantly, stalling for as long as you can—the weight of the gun in your pocket is too heavy, and you can’t even bring yourself to touch it. Your fingers graze the metal and it burns you.

What is wrong with you? Why are you so reluctant to kill someone who betrayed you? What is going on? You’re almost convinced that it’s some sort of ability—one like Lippmann’s, maybe, that prevents people from acting on their desire to kill him.

“What are you doing?” Dazai whispers, turning to look at you for the first time. His eyes are rimmed red, expression confused. “Why are you acting like this?”

You don’t reply for a moment, swallowing thickly as you look down at the sand. You don’t know how to answer—you don’t know why you’re acting like this. You walked out of the car with every intention of pulling the trigger, and now you can’t even bring yourself to touch the gun. You’re back to looking for excuses, back to trying to hide from the truth. 

Why?

You’ve never acted like this before, not when you’ve been slapped in the face with betrayal, stabbed in the back and then had the knife twisted. You can be avoidant sometimes, yeah, but never to the point of letting yourself look like a fool. Never like how you’ve been acting the past month with Dazai Osamu.

Why?

“Why?” you demand, voice breaking over the word. Your hand finally wraps around the grip of the gun, but you don’t pull it out. “I don’t know, Dazai, why don’t you tell me why?”

Dazai draws back, an uncertain expression crossing his face. “What?” he breathes out. “What do you mean?”

Not uncertain. Confused, but fearful. Hopeful. 

Who is he?

You start to get more antsy—more nervous. You don’t understand what’s going on, and a part of you is scared of understanding what’s going on. All of the thoughts you repressed over the past month of getting to know him resurface—all of the times you paused mid-laugh because the conversation felt too familiar, all of the times he would smile at you and you would swear you’d seen that smile before, all of the strange images that flashed in your head when you were too tired or too drunk.

“Tell me why, Dazai,” you demand. “Tell me who you are. Tell me why you’re so familiar. Why was Chuuya against me getting to know you? Have we met before? Who are you?”

Dazai doesn’t respond. He stares at you like he doesn’t know what to do—like he doesn’t know if he should respond. He doesn’t speak for too long, and you swallow thickly before pulling the gun out of your pocket. You don’t point it at him, but you don’t need to. His gaze drifts down to it, but you pause when he looks almost… nostalgic at the sight of it.

“Would you… believe me if I told you this wasn’t the first time you pulled a gun out on me?” he asks quietly, amused.

“What?” you breathe out, blinking twice as his words process, but you did hear him correctly. “What? What do you mean? Who are you?” 

His expression crumbles again. He looks away.

“Why won’t you tell me?” you ask, voice rising in a terrible combination of fear and anger. “Answer the damn question. Who are you?”

“You won’t believe me,” he whispers, shaking his head. “There’s no point.”

“Tell me anyway,” you say tightly. “I need to know.”

Dazai stares at you, conflicted, and you’re on the verge of demanding answers again, but you can feel a lump swelling in your throat, and you’re afraid that if you try to speak now, you might choke over a sob. Not now. Not in front of someone who could be an enemy. 

“I…was someone you loved,” he finally replies, voice so faint—like he’s scared to speak the words out loud. “I was—am—someone who loves you. We loved each other. A lot.”

You don’t reply. You stare at Dazai carefully, scrutinizing him, trying to figure out if he’s lying. He doesn’t… seem to be—his gaze stays pinned on yours, he doesn’t shift nervously, there’s no twitching in his face. He’s either telling the truth or believes that he is, but… can you believe it?

You swallow thickly, trying to get rid of that lump in your throat so you can say something, but it only gets bigger. The longer you stay silent, the more uncertain Dazai becomes. He only starts shifting on his feet when a minute passes, and you still say nothing.

You remember the first time you met him—he was so familiar and you couldn’t place how. You convinced yourself it was from the back of the book you read, but you knew in your heart that the answer wasn’t so simple. You knew there was a reason Chuuya didn’t want you to get close to him, you knew it was strange how quickly you were so endeared by him, and you especially knew that something was wrong with the way you were so quick to avert your eyes from all of the red flags. 

Nothing had made sense—was this what Repin had taken away from you? 

No. It couldn’t be. You refuse to believe it.

Because if you believed it, you would have to believe that someone you loved—someone who claimed to love you—used you, manipulated you to get information to hand over to the government. Someone who claimed to love you betrayed you, and you just can’t—you can’t deal with that. Not right now. 

It’s only when you start to shake your head in disagreement that Dazai speaks again. His voice is ragged—cut open, exposed, it feels like a knife to the gut, hearing the pain in his words: “You remember. You have to remember. You remember, don’t you?”

You shake your head again, taking a step back. “You’re lying.”

His expression shatters. “No,” he breathes out, fingers tugging at his hair as he squeezes his eyes shut for a brief second. “No. Please, if you don’t remember on your own, then I—you have to remember something. Anything. You took me to get the suit I wore to the event the other day. You—you came to see me at the hospital instead of going to an executive meeting. You brought me here you—”

“Enough,” you breathe out. “Enough, I don’t—”

“You do,” he snaps angrily. No, not angry—desperate. “You do, you just can’t reach it. You need to reach it—” his voice cracks, and suddenly he’s the one shaking. “You were so scared to get close to me. You tried to push me away so much, but I was just so stubborn. I—I blackmailed you into taking me on dates, but it wasn’t really blackmail because you could’ve gotten the leverage any time, but you just wanted the excuse—”

“Stop,” you say. It sounds like you. It sounds like something you would do. It makes most of your actions over the past month make sense. It scares you. When you try to step away, he grabs your wrist. You want to pull away, but you’re frozen, your world is lopsided, and your hand is still on the gun, but you’ve forgotten why. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t care for the truth.”

“I’m not a stranger to you. I was never a stranger. You know that, you’ve always known it, that’s why I was so familiar to you. That’s why you kept seeking me out,” he whispers, frantic now, begging you to understand. You don’t want to understand—not anymore. “You went to war with the Inagawa-kai for me. You almost died trying to save me from Arahabaki. You took over the Port Mafia and wiped everyone’s memories of me to protect me from Mori. You—”

“Enough,” you yell at him. “Shut up!”

Dazai draws back like he’s been slapped, his fingers fall from your wrist. You feel cold suddenly without his touch, but you take another step back. He looks sick as he stares at you silently, waiting for you to continue—too real of a reaction to be faked. But it can’t be real. Because if it is…

“You’re lying,” you say, grateful that your voice is steadier than you are. Dazai’s lips part in disbelief. You can see he’s on the verge of protest, so you force yourself to continue before he can. “You’re lying because if you loved me, you wouldn’t have used me to get close to me. You wouldn’t have lied to my face for weeks. You wouldn’t have stolen documents from my office to hand over to the government so they could fuck me over. I wouldn’t have killed my father for someone who was going to betray me in a few months.”

“It’s not what you think,” he says, voice breaking over the word. The expression on his face makes your chest tighten painfully—you can hardly even bear to look at it. “It’s not—I do love you. I love you so much it makes me sick. I never stopped loving you. Not once. Not when you decided to wipe your memories of me, and not when you looked me in the eye and asked me what my name was. I love you.”

“Just stop it,” you say quietly, looking away. You put the gun away instead of pulling the trigger. “Go.”

Dazai looks like he’s about to cry. “I—”

“Go,” you repeat before he can finish what he’s about to say. You turn away from him, not sure if it’s because you can’t handle the look on his face or if it’s because you don’t want him to see the expression on yours. “Don’t ever show your face to me again, because the next time I see you, I’ll pull the trigger.”

----------

Dazai doesn’t even really remember how he got to Port Mafia headquarters. He called someone to pick him up from the road near the beach house—Yosano, maybe, or Kunikida? He’s not sure which one he called, both of them came. He walked far enough down the road to make sure they didn’t see the beach house or have any inkling that he was at a safe house of yours. Dazai has done enough damage—the last thing he needed to do was take away one of the few places you have left that remind you of Itou. He knows you’ll never come back if you think it’s compromised. 

The last thing he really remembers is Yosano and Kunikida dropping him off at his apartment. They both offered to stick around, but he told them he wanted to be alone and then…

“Dazai, are you listening?” 

Dazai is startled out of his thoughts by the blonde man standing in the elevator with him—the infamous Leo Tolstoy he’s heard so much about from you. One of your most trusted confidants, and also, evidently, a traitor who is working behind your back with Mori.

Like Dazai.

Dazai shoves that thought to the back of his head instantly. Not like Dazai. Dazai isn’t a traitor—he’s not, he’s doing this for you. And you’ll understand once you remember everything, and then he can try approaching you again. It was a mistake to do it at the beach. He hadn’t even meant to run into you there; he just… wanted to go to the last place where things had been okay between the two of you. Before everything went to shit. 

He had no idea you would go there too, especially not with everything going down in Yokohama. He’d been careful not to go to the beach house the last seven months because he didn’t want to arouse any suspicion—he’s sure that you have cameras somewhere on the property, but he’s been aching to come back to this place. The first place you opened up to him, the first place you told him that you loved him, the first place he actually felt like he was worth something to someone. 

He needed to come here to remind himself that everything he’s done is just a means to an end. A way of getting you back. He didn’t betray you because he wanted to betray you, he didn’t give up those documents to hurt you—he’s doing all of this because he loves you, because he wants to do what he can to protect you, because he wants you back. Fuck, he just wants you back. That’s all he wants.

And he thought, maybe, he could get you back when you started demanding to know who he was, when you asked him why he was so familiar. He thought—maybe—that he wouldn’t have to take Mori up on his deal, that he could do this on his own and not even need to go looking for the painting, but you—

“Dazai,” Tolstoy says again, drawing him from his thoughts once more. “It would be great if you could listen.”

“I would listen if you were saying something important,” Dazai says instantly, voice dry. The blonde instantly gives Dazai a flinty look, and Dazai realizes that maybe he shouldn’t be antagonizing an ex-mob boss who is trying to help him, but he’s just not in the mood for needless conversation. “Can you just take me to the painting?”

Tolstoy lets out a heavy sigh, shaking his head. “My cousin is an asshole,” he finally says. “Don’t take anything he says to heart.”

Dazai rolls his eyes, not even deigning the comment with a response. He tilts his head back against the side of the elevator, eyes sliding shut as it lifts the countless floors of the tall black building. This was the building you used to live in—evidently now housing the former members of the Three Deaths. He wants to know what happened to your penthouse. If someone else is living up there and everything between the two of you has been destroyed.

It probably has, he thinks bitterly—he left too much stuff at your place to risk you going up there and seeing it. He bets the first thing Chuuya did in the aftermath of the memory wipe was rid your apartment of his existence. 

He detests the man even more.

“Why did you do it?” Dazai asks quietly, not looking at the man standing next to him. “She trusts you a lot, y’know. She spoke highly of you. Do you think she’ll forgive you when she finds out?” 

It’s not meant to be a dig, but it comes out as one from how Tolstoy inhales sharply. It’s mostly to gauge how your executives are seeing you and your mental state—he knows that you put up a front for him. As much as he’s confident in his ability to see through it, he knows that his limited encounters with you mean that he doesn’t see all of what’s going on behind the scenes, so he can’t know just how bad you’re doing.

“Honestly,” Tolstoy says dryly, shaking his head, “she’ll probably kill me.”

Dazai swallows thickly, lashes fluttering as he looks at the ground. He doesn’t know how you’ll react when you remember everything. He wants to believe that maybe you’ll come looking for him, that maybe things will be okay again, but… but he’s not stupid. He saw how you reacted to him trying to explain everything to you. You believed him, he knows you believed him, but you didn’t want to.

You didn’t want to because you couldn’t bring yourself to believe that someone who claims to love you would betray you the way Dazai has. He always has been the cause of his own undoing, hasn’t he?

He can feel Tolstoy looking at him, and he’s pretty sure the man is about to say something that’s going to annoy him, so Dazai instead says abruptly, “Mori said that you were initially planning to fight Chuuya.” He pauses and then adds, “But then backed down when she showed up. Why?”

Tolstoy doesn’t reply right away. The elevator hums beneath them, climbing floor after floor. Dazai doesn’t press—he watches as Tolstoy’s expression shifts as he figures out how he wants to answer the question.

Finally, Tolstoy exhales through his nose. “There are powers more dangerous than destructive ones,” he says slowly. “Nakahara Chuuya’s ability can level cities. Hers… twists people. It warps reason, intention, things you can’t fight with fists or strategy. Things you don’t even know are being influenced by someone else. It’s not something you can defend against or prepare for.”

“So it scared you,” Dazai says bluntly. “I thought her ability was a secret. How did you—”

“I didn’t,” Tolstoy cuts him off before he can finish his next question. “I didn’t know about it. Not at the time, at least, but I saw how my ability was reacting to her. There were six viable paths to victory against Nakahara Chuuya. Not high-probability outcomes, mind you—most of them had maybe a two to three percent success rate on a good day. But they were paths. Ways out. Reasons to hope. The fight was never meant to be the final battle, just a necessary detour. There were plans for what came next. Ways to resist the Port Mafia, undermine it, take it down.”

“But not when she showed up,” Dazai says, and Tolstoy nods.

“Not when she showed up,” he confirmed quietly. “All the variables collapsed. All of the paths splintered into dead ends. We could win, we could kill her way more easily than we would’ve been able to kill Nakahara, but what came after… Well, let’s just say death would’ve been too kind. She was already so entrenched in the world’s criminal underworld—the Family, the South’s Song, the Pale Flame… If we killed her, one or all would’ve come down on us in retaliation.”

“So you decided to bend the knee to the Port Mafia,” Dazai realizes, “but why not just bide your time?” 

“That was the original plan,” Tolstoy admits wryly, “but it didn’t work out that way.”

“Why not?”

Tolstoy grins suddenly, and Dazai casts him a curious expression. The man leans in like he’s going to tell Dazai a secret, “‘Cause once that girl has her claws in, you’re done. I couldn’t lift a hand against her if I wanted to. You know how people used to say that you could bite through your own finger as easily as a carrot, but your brain stops you from doing that much damage to your body.”

Dazai doesn’t think that’s necessarily true, but he frowns as he understands the implications of what he’s saying. “You’re saying she’s messed with your brain to the point that you literally couldn’t hurt her if you wanted to?”

Tolstoy lifts his hands in mock surrender. “I don’t know if that’s what it is,” he says honestly. “From what I know of her ability, I assume so, but it could also just be all me. That’s the problem with abilities like hers: you never know when they’re in effect and when they’re not. Never know if a thought or intention is yours or someone else’s. Regardless, she treats us well, so if you want my opinion—it doesn’t matter if it’s her ability or just me. I wouldn’t want to lift a hand against her. She’s a good friend of mine. She takes care of her people—you don’t see much of that in the underworld nowadays. I know if something happened to me, she wouldn’t jump ship like most in this world do, she’d fight for me. So quite frankly, I don’t give a damn what she thinks she needs to do to assure her own safety. We’ll never be in a situation where we have to find out if it’s her ability or my own will that stops me from wanting to turn against her.”

“Except you are in that situation,” Dazai says dryly as the elevator finally reaches the floor Tolstoy is bringing him to. “You betrayed her to work with Mori. Now with me too.”

Tolstoy shakes his head. “I did what I thought was best for her,” he disagrees quietly. “I wouldn’t say it’s betrayal—not in a way that implicates disloyalty to her, at least in terms of my perspective of it. But I knew how she would see it. I knew how this decision might end for me when I made it—treachery has only one punishment in our world.”

“Death,” Dazai murmurs more to himself than to Tolstoy. “So what? If she decides that you betrayed her, you’re just going to let her—”

“Yes,” Tolstoy interrupts before Dazai can even finish his question. “Yeah. I knew what I was doing when I made my decision, even if I do believe it’s in her best interests—I knew what the consequences would be.”

Dazai swallows thickly. “You can’t let her do that,” he says quietly. “You can’t let her think this is a betrayal. You have to explain to her, you—”

“I shouldn’t have to explain to you of all people that she acts quite quickly and efficiently when it comes to dealing with betrayal,” Tolstoy says dryly. “You were at the meeting where Ace was killed, weren’t you?”

Dazai looks away. He was there for the aftermath of it—his body was still warm on the executive’s round table when Mori beckoned Dazai to come into the meeting room. Still…

“She won’t be able to come to terms with it—with killing someone she considers a friend,” Dazai insists firmly. “You can’t let it come to that.”

“Well, I don’t exactly intend for it to, but it’s always a possibility,” Tolstoy replies dryly, leading Dazai into an apartment on one of the upper floors of the building. “Remember what I said about not taking anything he says seriously.”

Dazai side-eyes Tolstoy briefly before looking around the apartment. It’s deceptively simple—there’s no gaudy ornamentation or exorbitant decor on the tabletops or walls. Dazai might even go so far as to say it’s rather homely. There are a few paintings displayed—landscapes of what Dazai assumes is the Russian countryside and maybe the Italian coastline?—but none of them seem to be anything that might be storing your memories of him. He supposes that makes sense, they’d probably be hidden somewhere in case you came looking for Repin for some reason.

Though, the thought of you seeking out Repin in his apartment does make Dazai’s stomach churn uncomfortably. He remembers Dostoevsky’s comment too—about how he’s an old friend of yours, how he spent two years with you, how he plans to see you soon. Dazai makes himself sick at the thought, so he speaks up to try to distract himself.

“Where is the painting?” he asks impatiently. He wants to get out of here. He wants to get this painting and go find you. He’s been out of it since the conversation on the beach—how it ended, your reaction to him trying to tell you the truth. He won’t be settled until everything is okay again.

If everything is okay again.

“Be patient,” Tolstoy says flatly.

“I’ve been patient for seven months,” Dazai replies through grit teeth. “Do you know what it’s like to be erased from the lives of everyone you know?”

Tolstoy doesn’t even look at him leading him down a short hall to a back room. “I was under the impression you were only wiped from her and the executives’ memories. And anyone you met through them.”

Dazai’s throat tightens. “Yeah,” he agrees tightly. “I didn’t have anyone else.”

Tolstoy pauses in motion to open the door, as if digesting Dazai’s words. “I see,” he says mostly to himself, voice quiet. He looks back at Dazai after a moment, blue eyes carding over him before he says, “Well, I guess I understand then—I’m sorry that all of this came at such a high price to you. Let’s go get my cousin.”

Dazai doesn’t respond. He’s not sure that he can. The words hit something hollow in his chest—a gaping, lonely wound he’s been ignoring too long. He doesn’t want Tolstoy’s understanding. He wants yours. He wants things to go back, to rewind, to snap into place like they were before all of this started. He wants to matter to you again. He wants you to love him again. And now he doesn’t even know if you getting your memories back will be enough, because he might’ve ruined everything this past month.

Tolstoy finally turns the knob and pushes the door open. 

The room is darker than he expected—the blinds are drawn tight, only a candle lighting the far wall where there’s some quick movement that Dazai can’t make out. Tolstoy scoffs and turns on the light, and Dazai’s eyes narrow in on the man standing on the opposite side of the room.

“Must you always lurk in the darkness, Ilya?” Tolstoy complains, stepping to the side to lean against the wall as he frowns at his cousin. “It’s strange. You should stop.”

A man who must be Tolstoy’s cousin, Repin, sneers. “Must you always disturb me when I’m trying to paint? It’s irritating. You should stop.”

Tolstoy rolls his eyes, but before he can retort, Repin’s gaze focuses on Dazai, who immediately stiffens. He didn’t think he’d ever meet the ability user who stole all of the memories of him, and he’s not sure what he was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t… this. The man isn’t much older than him; he has deceptively soft features, paint smeared on his cheek. It’s only when he seems to realize who Dazai is that something malicious crosses his face.

“Wow, I’ve been dying to meet you,” Repin purrs, lips curling into an unkind smile. “You’re much… plainer than I expected.”

Dazai’s jaw tightens as he stares at the Russian, a sharp retort ready to fly off his tongue, but before he can let it loose, Tolstoy intervenes.

“Ilya, please,” Tolstoy says, voice strained. “Let’s just get this over with so we can get the cameras wiped before anyone realizes he’s here—or do you want Nakahara to catch us with him?” 

“Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it too,” Repin says instead, tossing a fleeting smile over at Tolstoy, but his gaze remains on Dazai, nose scrunching judgmentally. “He’s so… I mean, I saw him in people’s memories, but I was still expecting something more… exciting. He’s not her usual type—I mean, look at him compared to Dostoevsky or Jia Baoyu or that Italian she played around with for a few months. It’s almost hard to believe that he’s the one she did all of this for, and I’m the one who witnessed all the memories when taking them.”

Dazai definitely does not need to hear about how he’s so clearly not your usual type and how he’s so much plainer than the people you usually seek out, especially after you outright rejected him when he tried to explain everything to you. And yes, he knows that you didn’t reject him because you didn’t want him—you rejected him because you couldn’t cope with the idea of someone who claims to love you betraying you (which is a bit worse, he thinks balefully)—and he knows that you fell for him not once, but twice (even if the second time was kind of cheating), but still, all those old insecurities that resurfaced night of the first event return with a vengeance. 

Naturally, he masks it with arrogance, raising his eyebrows at Repin, a mocking smile that he knows doesn’t reach his eyes curling at his lips. “Sounds to me like you’re jealous. Hm? She reject you?”

Repin scoffs, the judgmental look fading into a more irritated one—Dazai’s smile becomes a bit more genuine, and a bit more sharper, when he realizes that he was right on the nose.

“Aw, she did, didn’t she?” Dazai croons. “Must suck, can’t relate.”

Can relate, actually, but Repin doesn’t need to know that. 

“Y’know, it took her days to come to me when you were captured by the Guild, “ Repin says after a moment. Dazai stiffens, but the man’s condescending tone was replaced with a more curious one. “I doubted she cared about you as much as she claimed to. I told her that right to her face.”

“Yeah?” Dazai asks. “What’d she say to that?”

“She threatened to have my tongue removed,” Repin replies, sounding oddly amused by the memory of it, “and then my hands.”

The smile that rises to his lips is softer this time as his gaze drifts down to the ground. He misses you—he misses you so badly that his chest physically aches, he doesn’t think he feels whole without you anymore. He just wants things to be as they were, and he knows they never will be, but… they can’t be like this. That conversation at the beach can’t be his last with you.

“I thought with you out of the picture, I’d finally be able to get into her bed,” Repin says too crudely. Tolstoy clicks his tongue sharply a few feet away, casting the man a sharp look, and Dazai’s teeth grind together in irritation. Repin continues more quietly, “I tried. Usually, when I store someone’s memories in a painting, they’re still subconsciously there, but only triggered by certain things. A specific place, a specific food, a specific face… I don’t think her subconscious memories of you ever really disappeared.”

Dazai’s throat spasms as he swallows, the crushing guilt that has been weighing on him for the past few weeks intensifies with more confirmation that you have subconsciously remembered him. He wonders how relieved you felt when you finally met him that night at the bar—you probably didn’t recognize it in the moment, but he knows it’s why you turned a blind eye to all of his red flags. It’s why you continued seeking him out. It’s why you gave him another chance on the beach even knowing what he did. It’s why your heart believed him, and it’s why your brain couldn’t let you. 

The piece of you that had been missing, the answers you’d been seeking, you found them that night at the bar, and Dazai took advantage of it. 

“Did she subconsciously remember me or did she just really not want to sleep with you?” Dazai scoffs defensively. “Maybe you’re just looking for excuses to explain why she rejected you—ever think she just doesn’t want you.”

“She didn’t reject me,” Repin hisses indignantly. “She didn’t—she just—I underestimated her ability to romanticize garbage, I guess.”

Dazai doesn’t rise to this one. It hits too close to home, because he is garbage, isn’t he? He’s garbage for taking advantage of you, for using you, for betraying you. He wonders if maybe your brain refused to let you believe he was telling the truth not because you couldn’t come to terms with the fact that someone who claimed to love you could betray you like this, but rather, because you were afraid that if you remembered, you might forgive him. Maybe that’s what scares you the most. Maybe you really don’t want anything to do with him.

Dazai starts to spiral, but Tolstoy, thankfully, seems to have had enough of his cousin’s antics.

“Ilya,” he repeats, voice sharp and low. “Enough. This isn’t the time.”

Repin mutters something under his breath in Russian, then turns on his heel, stomping across the room to a door. Tolstoy nods for Dazai to follow, and he lets out a heavy sigh before doing so. The door leads to a wide room with paintings set up all over the walls and resting on the floor—there’s far too many to count. Dazai swallows thickly, wondering just how many memories Repin has stolen since he’s gotten to Yokohama.

“My cousin has taken many memories before. When he does, he feels them himself during the in-between period before he gets them into a painting,” Tolstoy murmurs as Repin scratches the back of his head, looking around the roof, seemingly trying to figure out where your painting is. “None have affected him the way hers of you did. I had never seen him like that before.”

“What do you mean?” Dazai asks, swallowing thickly. 

Tolstoy gives Dazai a small, sad smile. “She loves you very, very deeply, Dazai.”

Dazai’s grateful for the loud, “Aha,” Repin lets out so he can turn his face away from Tolstoy to hide the way his eyes go misty. He tries to focus on the other man as he makes his way over to where three paintings are resting atop each other on the ground propped up against the wall. The painting is small—smaller than he expected, unassuming in size and on an unframed canvas, but everything else about it is unmistakable.

It’s a portrait. A portrait of him. Not just of him—he recognizes the background, the moment. It’s from the day he ran into you near the ports so many months ago. He looks different. Dazai has never liked his own reflection. He looks ghoulish—his eyes are too dark and his skin is too pale, his features are sunken and uncanny. He’s never considered himself handsome, though he likes to put on a front of being god’s gift to the world.

But in this—through your eyes… Dazai swallows thickly as Repin passes the painting over to him. The sun is setting behind his head in the painting, casting a golden glow over him; there’s a soft smile curling at his lips and his eyes are rich golden color instead of the black he’s grown accustomed to in the mirror. He looks… good. He looks…

“... the sun hit you just right. You looked so pretty beneath it that I was almost tongue-tied. If we hadn’t been interrupted, I would’ve made a fool out of myself.”

Dazai almost wants to cry as your words from the beach house echo through his head. His throat tightens terribly, his knuckles are white around the canvas—he misses you, he wants you back so desperately. 

“Where are the others?” he asks, grateful that his voice is steadier than he feels. He forces himself to look up from the canvas to focus his gaze on Repin and Tolstoy. “Her subordinates and the other executives. I want those too.”

Repin and Tolstoy share a long look with each other and Dazai’s jaw tightens, ready to argue with them, but after what feels like an eternity, Repin lets out an exasperated sigh before returning to looking for the rest of the paintings. Dazai’s gaze drifts back over to where the Russian had grabbed his painting, swallowing thickly when he realizes that one of the other two there must be the one that implanted your fake memories of Mori’s death. It’s the one in front—Dazai can’t see the one behind it—you’re on your knees in the painting, and the older man is dead in your arms—a bullet to the head. He’s not close enough to be able to make out the expression on your face, but he can tell that you’re wailing, hunched over his body, probably screaming. 

“I wouldn’t have killed my father for someone who was going to betray me in a few months.”

Dazai can hardly look at it for more than a few moments without feeling nauseous. This is what you think happened seven months ago. This is what he’s going to have to lie to you about. No, he doesn’t have to—he can tell you the truth, but at what cost?

He’s been trying to figure out what he should do since he spoke to Mori that day. He knows that once he burns this painting, he could theoretically do whatever he wanted. He could run to you and he could tell you the truth. He could tell you Mori is alive and the painting that Repin used to implant the fake memories is here. 

But is Mori right? Will Dostoevsky know as soon as you know? Is that something he can risk? Is that something you would want to risk? 

He doesn’t know, and the uncertainty has been killing him. 

Repin makes his way over to Dazai, but Tolstoy intercepts. He watches with a frown as the two of them speak quietly in rapid-fire Russian before Repin rolls his eyes and removes several paintings from the pile he was bringing over. Dazai’s eyes narrow instantly, but before he has the chance to interrogate them, Tolstoy speaks up:

“Only the executives, the Flags, and her subordinates,” he says. “Everyone else is unnecessary. The less people that know about you, the better.”

Dazai doesn’t reply, reaching out to take the small pile of paintings. He has to shuffle them around to hold them comfortably, and he pauses when he sees the one on the top. It must be Klaus’s—it’s from that same day at the ports, but it’s an angle from above. He hadn’t even noticed the boy up there that day, too absorbed in the sight of you in the sunset.

From the rooftop, Klaus had a clear view of you, and Dazai swallows thickly when he sees the expression on your face. It’s soft, adoring almost—is that really the way you’ve been looking at him since the beginning? And he was having meltdowns thinking that you didn’t actually like him and he was forcing you to indulge him?

“Alright, leave now,” Repin says, physically shooing him out of the room. “I was on such a roll with my painting, and now you’ve ruined the ambience. If I can’t back into it, I’m making it your problem, Leo.”

“Whatever, Ilya,” Tolstoy says dryly, following Dazai out of the room. “Alright, let’s get you out of here before Nakahara shows up.”

Dazai immediately is looking around. He knows that he saw… there. He quickly makes his way over to the fire place on the opposite side of the room. He tosses some of the paintings immediately—he doesn’t like looking at the ones that he assumes are the Flags’. He can tell they’re from that night with the battle against Lovecraft where you almost died, and Dazai can hardly bear to look at them, because he remembers your body crumpled on the ground, the hole in your abdomen, and he doesn’t want to remember that. He pauses for a second before throwing Klaus���s in there with it, fingers tracing your expression, trying to commit to memory, and then he stares at the only one left. 

Yours.

“We really don’t have time for this,” Tolstoy says with a tight smile. “Toss it so we can go.”

“You’re that scared of the slug,” Dazai scoffs, swallowing the lump in his throat as he struggles to toss your painting into the fire with the rest. It’s what he’s wanted for so long—he wants your memories back, he wants you back, but now that it’s within reach, he’s scared. 

Will this be enough to get you back?

Will you regain your memories and come looking for him? Or has he ruined everything?

Dazai doesn’t know—there’s too much he doesn’t know, and he hates not knowing things. Your words from the beach ring through his ears again. The way you refused to believe him even though you knew in your heart he was telling the truth. The hurt expression on your face. The way that even after everything, you still tried to give him another chance. Would you understand when you regain your memories? Or would it make his betrayal hurt even more?

“Dazai,” Tolstoy insists when he doesn’t immediately toss the painting. “We have to go.”

Dazai tosses the painting in with the rest before he can think himself out of it. The canvas catches slowly, edges slowly curling as the fire licks at the paint like it’s savoring each flake of color. For a moment, the portrait fights back. The glow of the setting sun, the softness in his eyes, his smile—it stays preserved. It doesn’t last. The image slowly starts to warp as the fire eats away at it, and Dazai looks away as his face becomes as eerie and uncanny as he imagines it to be.

“Let’s get going,” Tolstoy says, nudging his shoulder. “Don’t be worried if you don’t hear from her immediately. The memories don’t come back all at once—it’ll take a few hours, maybe a bit longer for her to understand them.”

Dazai nods mutely, but still doesn’t immediately turn to follow him. Your memories will return by morning. Dazai should feel lighter—he finally achieved what he started all of this for. You’ll remember now. You’ll remember him. Everything.

Instead, dread coils in his stomach like a snake.

He wonders where you are right now. Whether your hands have started to tremble. Whether you’ve dropped something you didn’t know you were holding. Whether his name has just risen to your lips. Whether the pain in your chest has returned, suddenly, violently. Whether you’re crying and don’t know why.

He wonders if you’ll hate him.

He thinks that you will.

When Dazai follows Tolstoy out of Repin’s place, he’s half out of it—he had to shove his hands in his pockets to hide the way his fingers were suddenly shaking. Tolstoy opens the door and turns to say something to Dazai, but freezes when he realizes who is standing on the opposite side of it. 

Nakahara Chuuya stares at Dazai like he’s seeing a ghost. The look of someone realizing that the nightmare they’d been dreading has just come true. Dazai stares at the mafioso blankly—he wants to make a snide comment, maybe insult him a little bit, but his tongue is heavy in his mouth and his lips feel numb.

“What the fuck have you done?” Chuuya asks quietly.

Dazai’s throat spasms as he swallows. “I don’t know.”

----------

Dostoevsky wipes away a tear that you don’t even realize is rolling over your cheek. His thumb is cool against your skin—his touch has always been oddly cold, but never more than right now—still, you don’t pull away the way you usually would. You lift your hand to grab his wrist, fingers brushing the jagged scar you’ve become quite familiar with over the past few months. He raises his eyebrows slightly in surprise, taking advantage of the fact that you don’t shift away from his touch to let his thumb slide down your cheek to absently trace your lips.

His thumb rests on your bottom lip, heavy like a weight. He doesn’t question why you’re suddenly crying—he knows you well enough to realize that you probably don’t know why. But you’re grateful for it anyway, because you think if you tried to speak right now, you’d hardly get the words out over the lump that’s suddenly swollen in your throat.

What is going on?

“Why did you call me here so suddenly?” he hums, voice low and deceivingly soft.

You don’t answer his question right away. Instead, you stand very still, one hand pressed against your chest, where something inside you has shifted, tilted. Not enough to break, but enough to destabilize. Like the center of your world has warped by a few degrees and everything familiar is now just slightly off-center. 

Dangerous, considering your current company. 

You give Dostoevsky a long look. “Did you… do something to me?”

As soon as the question slips from your lips, you know that it isn’t him. 

“No,” he says simply. “Not me.”

You know who it was then. Warm brown eyes, bandaged arms, a soft smile. You taste ash in your mouth. Your lashes flutter as vague images flash behind your eyes—you can’t make any of them out, but you can feel them. You can feel the way your chest swells with fear, with anger, with distress, with love. You desperately try to push them away again, not ready for this. 

Shit.

You wanted so badly to believe he was lying at the beach. You knew in your heart he wasn’t, but it just wasn’t something you had time to come to terms with considering everything going on right now. You’d known you made a mistake as soon as you demanded the truth from him, but it had been too late.

“Why did you ask me to come here?” he asks again, hand cradling the side of your face as he looks down at you through his lashes. His touch suddenly feels wrong, but you can’t bring yourself to pull away.

Because you needed a distraction. Ever since you left him at the beach, your mind has been a dangerous, dangerous place. Echoes of a past that is so familiar and unfamiliar at the same time keep circulating through your head—a hospital bed, Itou’s beach house, a side street near the ports. Each time one of these memories flashes through your head, it becomes clearer and clearer, threatening to consume you. It’s only a matter of time that whatever these memories are—whatever this lost past of yours is—they become your new reality.

And you don’t want it.

You’re not ready for it.

Not now, maybe not ever. 

You don’t want what Dazai told you to be true. You don’t want to remember this. If you really did love him as much as he claims you did, then you won’t be able to handle his betrayal. All of the times you tried to hound Chuuya for answers, all of the moments where you reached desperately for the truth that’s been eluding you for months—now that it’s within grasp, you’re frantically pushing it away before it can destroy you. 

Because it will destroy you. It will destroy you knowing that you killed Mori for someone who lied to you for weeks, took advantage of your lost memories to get close to you, all for information to hand over to the government. You killed Mori for someone who betrayed you within a year. You killed the closest thing you’ve ever had to a father for a love that died as quickly as it flourished.

“Maybe I wanted to see you,” you whisper, lips curving up into a playful smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes.

“Dangerous,” he repeats what he said the last time you gave him this explanation, a teasing curve to his lips as he looks down at you. “And untrue.” 

“Maybe I just want to be distracted tonight,” you amend, this time more truthfully as you tilt your head to the side into his touch, eyes imploring as you look up at him. “Indulge me?”

Dostoevsky’s throat bobs as he looks down at you. He doesn’t respond right away, fingers tensing against your skin. Then, he steps back—away from you, his hand falls from your face. You exhale to prepare yourself for rejection, but before you can, his hand slides down to your waist to pull your body closer to his.

He sits down on the chair behind him, and he pulls you down with him. Your breath catches when you find yourself straddling his lap, his hands resting on your hips, lithe fingers tracing patterns over the thin fabric of your dress. He tilts his head back to look up at you, black hair framing his face, violet eyes glittering, darker than they usually are.

When one of his hands slides up your body to cradle the side of your neck, fingers absently toying with your hair, you swear you can feel familiar rough bandages against your skin. You swallow thickly, looking down at Dostoevsky—for a moment, his eyes are a familiar soft brown instead of the sharp violet you’ve become accustomed to, but it passes too quickly. 

“I will indulge you in anything, darling.” 

[ikolaiigh]

*Squints*...wait a second!?! (BSD SPOILERS BELOW)

---

Bungou Stray Hedgehogs AU

Man, this is a LONG post,,, but I saw pieces of the newest chapter for bsd and.... ugghhhgg

Never has yaoi been so doomed in my life.. amyways, this what my thought process was like before going on a tangent of redrawing frames from both the anime and a little manga:

[ikolaiigh]

I can see 100% Daisuke quoting shit from Sonic fandub like

Daisuke: I miss my wife anya- I miss her a lot I will be back

Anya: ?????

[ikolaiigh]

🎆🐍🎉 HAPPY NEW YEAR 2025 🎉🐍🎆

We hope you're excited for this year of STUDIO INVESTIGRAVE 💞

[ikolaiigh]

R O U N D 1

[ikolaiigh]

[ikolaiigh]

Sonic fans will tell you the Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) theme song is one of the coolest things ever made and then when you listen to it the lyrics are going "Here we go buddy here we go buddy here we go, here we go buddy here we go"

[ikolaiigh]

Bruh is living in his on personal hell daily 

[ikolaiigh]

why must the guard dog characters unquestioning devotion to their master be born from trust or some shit cant they be manipulated into it. raised into it. brainwashed even

[ikolaiigh]

my hatred turned to pity / my resentment blossomed flowers

[ikolaiigh]

i am 100% sure that anya was a warrior cats kid when younger and would tweak whenever someone got the lore wrong

[ikolaiigh]

[ikolaiigh]

Anya mood

[ikolaiigh]

Married in Red AU, i chose these two bc they both can be this craazyy, who would be the nice groom?

[ikolaiigh]

Palestine Fundraisers

due to an influx of requests for campaign boosting, i've decided to compile all the fundraisers i've been sent (all vetted/unique images) into a single post. this post will be constantly updated and will remain in my pinned post for easy access. please, wherever you can, donate, boost, and share. don't stop talking about palestine 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

if you are an owner of a campaign and you would like it here, please dm/inbox me and i will add it asap!!

link to el-shab-hussein's vetted fundraisers list for more!

Donate to Help Zaen and Yehya to get out of Gaza, organized by Fahed Shhabe - @mohammedshehab333 / @hyamshehab

https://gofund.me/9a4408e3

Donate to Help Mohammed's Family From Gaza Rebuild Their Lives, organized by Mohammed Abu Swierh - @mohammedswierh2

https://gofund.me/509e0d14

Donate to Help my Uncel's family , BE THE CHANGE, organized by Roba Ayyad - @yasermohammad

https://www.gofundme.com/f/my-uncle-and-his-children-rebuild-their-life

Donate to Bone Grafting Operation for Muhammad & House Reconstruction, organized by Haruka Aoki - @mohammed-atallah / @mohammedatallahsblog / @atalah-mohammed / @mohammedatallah

https://www.gofundme.com/f/bone-grafting-operation-for-muhammad-house-reconstruction

Donate to Help my kids to evacuate Gaza to Egypt, I need surgery there, organized by kawthar jad - @hadiah1 / @hadiah1111 https://www.gofundme.com/f/take-out-my-family-from-gaza-strip

https://www.paypal.me/kawtharjad

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[ikolaiigh]

⚖️ Do you atone now?

[ikolaiigh]

I need Bok-su meeting reader at Da-jeong’s wedding who is also there for revenge because of something Da-jeong did to them in the past 🙏

The U & I in Revenge

𝑻𝑾/𝑾𝑨𝑹𝑵𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑺..Mentioned violence, Reader is a bit unhinged in this one, violent thoughts, Bok-su being her own warning lmao.

𝑷𝑨𝑰𝑹𝑰𝑵𝑮𝑺: Bok-su x Fem!Reader

𝘈/𝘕: Hey guys, guess who's back from the dead! Life's been rough with me, but nonetheless, I am back. I've been caught up on the Married in Red, and the request just fueled up my hyperfix. I am also going to make a pt 2 for this !! So I hope you all enjoy :)

-Listen to The U & I in Suicide by the handsome devil for better experience.

The pre-wedding meandering is as boring and dreadful as you thought it would be.

Swirling your glass of champagne, you lean against the far wall of the room, a smile carefully plastered on your face. The lively chatter and laughter of the crowd around you fade into the background. You take a slow sip, savoring the bubbles that tickle your tongue, pretending to enjoy the celebration.

In truth, you couldn't care less about mingling with the crowd or being seen by it. You’re here because it's your sister’s pre-wedding party, and you need to keep up the facade of being happy for her. After all, everyone expects you to be thrilled about the upcoming nuptials.

Oh the things you did for your sister.

Speaking of the devil... Truly, the only exciting thing about all of this so far has been seeing her dear friend who dropped out of university. The sheer horror on Da-jeong’s face as she greeted her.

You see your sister, radiant as ever, chatting animatedly with the guests. Her laughter rings out, clear and bright, drawing everyone's attention. She looks genuinely happy, the center of everyone's admiration and affection.

You grip your glass of champagne a bit tighter, feeling the cool stem press into your palm. A frown tugs at the corners of your mouth as you watch her bask in the spotlight. The warmth of the room feels stifling, contrasting sharply with the envy settling in your chest. You take another sip of champagne, your smile faltering just slightly as you struggle to maintain your composure.

You start to wonder when everything went wrong in your life. You dedicated yourself to your studies, always striving for excellence, while Da-jeong was carefree, attending parties and messing around. Despite her seemingly reckless behavior, she always managed to captivate everyone’s attention.

From childhood, your sister had been the center of attention, effortlessly drawing admiration from family and friends. You worked hard, hoping to gain the same recognition from your parents, but it always felt like you were in her shadow. The spotlight was hers, no matter how much you accomplished.

A bitter thought creeps in: you wish it were you gaining the spotlight, not your sister. Your grip on the glass tightens to the point of discomfort, and you can't help but glare at Da-jeong as she basks in her moment of glory.

You imagine her wedding dress stained red by your hands. How selfish she is. After all the opportunities you gave her. No gratitude, no acknowledgment. Just her, always in the spotlight. You wish they could see her for who she truly is. The envy burns hotter. The champagne glass feels like it might shatter.

You, always in the background. Her, always the favorite. Your hard work overlooked. Her careless charm adored. It's not fair. It’s never been fair.

It's her fault. Not yours. Not yo-

"You don't seem very happy."

The grip on the champagne glass in your hand lessens as you're suddenly startled by a voice. You quickly turn to face the person, forcing a smile onto your lips.

"Whatever do you mean, darling? I'm perfectly fine," you say, giggling lightly. You hope the sound of your laughter is convincing enough to make them forget the tension they just witnessed, wishing they would move on and leave you to your thoughts.

"In my eyes, you were glaring at the bride, angrily might I add," the person says with a slight grin, sipping their own champagne while looking at you. You grit your teeth in slight annoyance, biting the tip of your tongue to refrain from snapping.

"Really? That's quite the imagination you have," you reply with a forced chuckle, trying to keep your tone light, taking another sip of your champagne, hoping to divert their attention. "I must have been lost in thought. You know how these family events can be."

The person presses further, their grin widening. "Lost in thought, you say? Looked more like jealousy to me."

"Mind your own business!" You retort sharply. A few people nearby glance your way, their conversations pausing. Realizing your outburst has drawn attention, you quickly put on a sweet facade and apologize to the onlookers.

"Sorry about that, everyone. Just a bit of a misunderstanding," you say with a charming smile.

As the crowd’s attention shifts back to their own conversations, you turn back to the person, scowling. You take in her appearance: black shoulder-length hair tied into a messy ponytail, a black vinyl trench coat with a white undershirt, a red belt cinched around her waist, and red gloves on her hands. Recognition dawns on you—she's your sister's ex-friend from university.

“What do you want?” You ask, your voice low, as you place the empty glass of champagne on the waitress’s tray, offering a polite thank you. You turn back to the woman, your gaze steady.

“I was just curious about why you were looking at the bride like that,” she says, her tone almost playful. She takes a leisurely sip of her own champagne, still smiling, then sets her glass down, and extends her hand toward you. “I’m Bok-su, by the way. We haven’t fully met yet."

"Not in person, no. I'm Choi [Name]. My sister spoke a lot about you when she was at uni," you say with a polite smile, extending your gloved hand to her.

Bok-su takes your hand, her touch unexpectedly warm, and she brings it to her lips, pressing a light kiss on the back of it. Her eyes hold a knowing glint as she releases your hand.

"Interesting," she murmurs, a hint of amusement in her voice. "I didn’t realize I’d left such an impression. I've heard quite a bit about you too. Always the diligent one, weren't you?"

“Yes, well, someone had to be,” you reply lightly, feeling a bit flushed from the unexpected kiss. You quickly withdraw your hand and reach for the glass of champagne. “So, what brings you here tonight, Bok-su? And judging by your attire, you seem to be dressed for a funeral.”

"Your sister said the same thing. I sure was dressed for the right occasion," Bok-su chuckles softly, placing a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound, her eyes never leaving yours. She glances momentarily at the groom, ensuring he remains in her peripheral vision.

You choke on the champagne you were drinking and caught off guard by her comment. You let out a small cough as the liquid goes down the wrong pipe, your cheeks flushing with embarrassment and something else you can't quite place.

"I wasn't expecting that." You say, trying to regain your composure, your voice steadier now. you manage, dabbing at your mouth with a napkin. "So, you're here to stir things up?"

"Maybe." She says, her tone light but her eyes serious, Bok-su tilts her head slightly, studying you with an intensity that would send a shiver down anyone's spine.

You hum thoughtfully in response, swirling your second glass of champagne as you scan the crowd, searching for your sister. The conversation settles into a comfortable silence, the soft hum of the party filling the background.

"You didn't do it," you say, breaking the silence as you continue to gaze at the crowd, your glass still in hand. You can feel Bok-su bristle beside you.

"What?" Bok-su asks, shooting you a disgruntled look. You glance at her from the corner of your eye, her expression unreadable.

"You didn't kill the patient that day," you continue, a sneer creeping onto your face as you finally turn to face her fully. You can see the bafflement in her eyes, though she tries to mask it. "And you're here to take revenge on my sister."

"You've done your homework," she murmurs, her tone both admiring and wary. Bok-su's baffled expression only lasts a moment before she regains her composure, a slow smile spreading across her face.

"It didn't make sense for you to leave university like that," you reply, your tone dripping with a mix of charm and cunning. taking a leisurely sip of your champagne, letting the moment stretch out. "And besides it seems that i will let your plan happen."

"Touché," she replies, her eyes flickering with a mixture of mania and excitement. "It appears that i might have a role for you to play in."

"And who says that i want to join in?" You reply sharply, a frown tugs at the corners of your mouth as you look at her.

"I saw the hatred in your eyes as you looked at your sister," she says calmly, leaning in slightly, her breath grazing in your ear. "Don't you crave a taste of that spotlight, even just a glimmer of fame in your life?"

Her words hit a nerve, and you stiffen, your jaw tightening. “You think you know me so well, don’t you?”

“i know i didn't lie." she says softly, her voice almost a purr. Bok-su’s smile remains, though it’s tinged with a hint of satisfaction. "I just have a feeling you’re tired of cleaning up her messes.”

Her words linger in the air, and despite your attempt to remain composed, you can feel a flicker of doubt within you. The idea of craving recognition, of wanting just a taste of the spotlight, unsettles you more than you care to admit.

“I…” You start, but your voice trails off as you struggle to find the right words.

“Think about it.” she continues, her voice low and persuasive. “You have the intelligence and the charm. Why waste it playing being the second choice?”

You let out a low growl, processing her words, the struggle evident on your face as you wrestle with your emotions. Finally, you let out a reluctant sigh, your resolve hardening. “Alright, you’ve made your point.”

Bok-su’s eyes gleam with satisfaction, but she remains silent, waiting for you to continue.

“You’re right,” you admit, the words tasting bitter but liberating. “I am tired of cleaning up her messes. I want more than just standing in the background while she takes all the credit.”

Bok-su nods, her expression serious. “Then we have a common goal. We can help each other achieve what we want.”

“And what exactly do you propose?” You tilt your head slightly, studying her.

Bok-su steps closer, invading your personal space. Her proximity makes your pulse quicken, and you realize you’ve been holding your breath. You let it out slowly, feeling the warmth of her breath against your throat. Bok-su leans in, her lips almost brushing your ear as she whispers.

“We’re going to make Da-jeong atone.”

𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲𝗱 © 2024 𝗩𝘀𝗸𝗸𝗼𝗹𝘆𝗮𝗮. 𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗱𝗼 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆, 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁, 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲, 𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗳𝘆 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺.