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Nakahara Chuuya rarely hated others. Disliked, yes, but hated with a passion that tore his very being into pieces? Only a few could brag about it, and fewer could survive it.
Unfortunately, Dazai was allowed to survive it, even if it was well within Chuuya’s range to get rid of him. Mori would have Chuuya’s head otherwise.
“Oi. Chibikko. Hat rack. Chuuya. Can you hear me? Or did your height affect your hearing too?”
Dazai’s tone grated at Chuuya’s nerves. It reminded Chuuya of the metal leg-hold trap one of the kids in the Sheep almost got caught in, and how Shirase and another member had used its parts to create a small shelf. The metal had scraped painfully against the walls, uprooting old plaster in its wake, before Chuuya was fed up enough with the noise to use his ability to help.
The end product had been worth it, though. They had managed to fit some books and toys for the younger children in the two jaws of what once nearly crushed someone’s leg. The particular deserted warehouse they had used was far from the residential areas, a safehouse of sorts, so it remained against the wall even after Chuuya was kicked out.
Meeting Shirase and his dumb half-apology had dulled out that pain. It had hurt to be betrayed by the first place he thought he belonged to – the first place he knew, but it felt less painful over time. He had felt something click with the Flags, though, but that hadn't ended well at all.
He missed them. A part of him wanted to hate Verlaine, scream at him until his throat hurt and numbness replaced rage. The other part just ached for a missing bond, a lost brother who could never exist.
Dazai was the closest thing to friendly company he had left – the boss and Ane-san were his superiors. Respected, but not really people he would talk freely with. It was an ironic fact, considering how he despised Dazai with every inch of his being.
That’s not many inches, chibi.
“Shut up, idiot.” He stuck out his tongue, a petty approach, before getting back to the video game, only then having noticed he'd crashed into a billboard in that second of a distraction. He tossed his console to the side. Frustrated, he curled up, hands around his legs. The floor dented below him.
If Dazai’s expression was anything to go by, he had thrown off his game intentionally.
Chuuya’s face remained buried in his knees. “What do you want?”
“To die, obviously.”
“Get to the point, Dazai.”
Dazai hummed. Leaned further into the unnecessarily expensive couch Chuuya had purchased a week before. “Can you write with your ability?”
“Like using it to dent into a paper? No.”
“Your brain is what’s dented, slug. I was talking about using it on a pen.”
A valid question in its own right, but Chuuya’s patience was already wearing thin. Not bothering to glance up from his position on the floor, he chucked a pen using his ability at Dazai’s face, the nib just managing to graze his cheek before he dodged it.
“You asked me to use it on a pen, I used it on a pen. Now go find someone else to bother.”
Realising he wouldn’t be getting any answers for a while, Dazai stood up, leaving through the window and clicking the latch close behind him. Chuuya waited a minute, as if confirming the other person’s absence in the room, before looking up.
He stumbled onto his feet. Maybe he could find something to drink.
*
The doubt lingered though, an idea that had rooted itself in his mind. Sleep was far from near either way, so he flipped on the light switch and let familiar red envelope a pen near his bed.
It lifted easily, effortlessly. He raised it to the nearest wall, aiming to draw a triangle. If he could draw one without lifting his pen, he could probably learn to write letters too.
The ‘triangle’ ended up looking like a snake having a fit.
Falling back onto his bed, he dropped the pen onto the table. Writing required a continuous steadiness he lacked. He could pause objects mid-air, lift them and toss them easily, but writing using his ability was pushing an object and then changing its trajectory midway. Similar to integrating smaller motions across a larger area.
A little like a circle was a bunch of points assembled together. An infinite sided polygon. Adam had told him that, showing off his laser tipped finger. Maybe Adam could have given him some advice on writing letters on walls with his ability too.
He clutched the pillow to his chest, burying his nose in it. He would call someone to paint over his poorly attempted triangle later.
*
“You tried it.” Dazai stated the next day while they walked towards Mori’s office, hovering by his shoulders and around him like an insect. Chuuya ignored him.
Undeterred, Dazai just stepped in front of him, facing Chuuya and walking backwards. “You couldn’t do it though, could you, chibi?”
“I’m still growing, dumbass.” Dazai waved him off.
Chuuya wasn’t going to admit he struggled with only three lines, let alone a few letters. He walked faster, shoving Dazai to the side with more force than required. Rubbing the shoulder that had hit the wall, Dazai once again trotted up to walk beside him.
“Do you think you could do it if you practised?” he continued, his one visible eye glinting with something akin to curiosity.
They were practically jogging by then. Dazai was only barely able to continue walking, long strides being an advantage. “Why would I even need such a skill, shitty mackerel?”
“You have no sense of adventure,” Dazai huffed, and Chuuya’s jogging broke into a full-blown sprint.
Dazai managed to run for barely over a minute before giving up. Chuuya continued walking at a faster pace to the office, enjoying the next seven minutes of silence.
*
Two nights later, he managed to draw a steady triangle without lifting the pen from the wall. Added a few more lines to make it look like a shovel. Setting his hands on his hips, he beamed at the splotches of lines and pen ink all over the wall by his bed, and grabbed the pen hovering at the edge of the triangle in his hand.
An hour less of sleep wouldn’t hurt. He could try a quadrilateral. Maybe draw a picture close to Elise's level.
An hour became two, and two became three, and the lack of sleep in his eyes was more obvious than the roughly concealed bag under Dazai’s uncovered eye.
*
Four days after Dazai’s question, Chuuya found the teenager lying on his – Chuuya’s, not Dazai’s – bed when he returned to his house post midnight.
It should have honestly been more surprising. Chuuya just found exhaustion seeping down to his bones. “You’re getting dirt all over my bed.”
"A 'hello' wouldn't hurt, you know," Dazai chuckled.
"Hello and get out of my room then!" He was shouting. Kouyou would be disappointed, but Chuuya needed to get rid of the anger. Slamming Dazai against the wall and gutting him in the stomach would be crossing lines.
"Let's admire your artwork on the walls first. Ah, what would Ane-san say? 'Patience, lad.' Oh! And you've not even done many letters yet!"
Aren't lines imaginary, either way? He slammed Dazai against the wall and gutted him in the stomach. Watched Dazai slump to the ground in satisfaction.
Dazai beamed right back, hiding any sign of pain. Chuuya knew he was tired too, though, and crossed his arms impatiently.
"I have a challenge," Dazai finally began.
Challenges from people like Dazai and Mori were, if possible, to be refused. Chuuya was almost tempted to walk away. Almost.
He waited for Dazai to continue.
"If you can write sentences comfortably, with any of these items anywhere -" he listed a few items off his head "- under two weeks, I'll let you win the next time we go to the arcade. If you can't, you'll have to draw a smiley face on your hat in silver glitter and leave it there for a week."
"What kind of a shitty deal is that? And I can win on my own!"
"Fine, you spell out your winning conditions. Smiley face with glitter is still a part of the deal." There was something else to Dazai's challenge, but Chuuya wasn't about to miss such a chance.
He briefly considered asking Dazai to do his share of paperwork, before realisation dawned that Dazai would find a way to escape it. Dazai could dodge most conditions thrown at him. He pensively narrowed his eyes.
"You'll have to dance to Beethoven. You can choose the piece."
Dazai's eye went comically wide, flashing through multiple expressions before settling on neutral. "How do you dance to Beethoven?"
"Precisely."
"It's a pointless condition, though. I can dance well." Dazai, in fact, couldn’t dance well. For all that he could do, dancing was one thing he remained average at, and accepting Chuuya's condition was inviting embarrassment.
Chuuya snorted. "You can't do shit well."
"Your loss, then." Dazai was stalling. Chuuya had unexpectedly played the cards right instead of asking Dazai to do his chores, but if Chuuya found the challenge uninteresting, he would probably change it to something simpler to handle.
"Fine then. Create lyrics based on a piece by Beethoven and then dance to it. Your genius brain can handle it."
Well.
"What- no!"
"I won't accept the challenge then," said Chuuya impassively. Dazai seemed far too curious about his ability, and Chuuya figured that could be played to his advantage.
Being tired made Chuuya weirdly smarter.
Dazai would have to think harder to get out of such a stupid bet. He hit a fist against the ground, exasperated, hissing slightly in pain. "You're so annoying!” he shouted. “Where did you suddenly get a brain from?" He rarely lost his temper, so Chuuya considered it a rare win, turning on his heel to walk out of the room.
"Fine!” Dazai continued, making Chuuya pause in the doorway. “But your time’s reduced to a week." Chuuya turned around to face him.
“10 days.”
“8. ”
“9.”
The lack of a response was the confirmation Chuuya required, and he left the room with his hands in his pockets. Dazai seethed, back unmoving against the ink painted wall, before Chuuya returned briefly and stuck his head through the door frame.
“Also? Get out of my room. And don’t steal anything!”
Dumb Chuuya was back. Of course Dazai wasn’t about to listen, but that didn’t stop him from flashing an innocent smile at the boy. Revenge was a sweet process.
People often understood why Chuuya hated Dazai. Having to place his life in hands that held no value for living, having to deal with a mind that seemed far superior to his own, and the whole point of his scheming, useless partner being Dazai.
After all, most people hated Dazai too.
They didn't get why Dazai hated Chuuya, though. Some said it was because he was so much more human, so much more alive than Dazai could ever be. The ones closer to them suspected it was because Chuuya could stay human even after being given enough excuses not to be one.
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the entire reason either.
He and Chuuya were alienated from the mainstream. Far too odd to ever be accepted amongst it. Dazai thrived on it, playing himself as a mystery, using and disposing of people like pawns.
Chuuya considered people his equals even after everything thrown his way. Harnessing Arahabaki like a painless scar that would never heal completely. Like he had been a pawn on the chessboard too, only recently having been promoted to a minor.
Chuuya was, simply put, an enigma.
Moreover, Dazai couldn't understand how someone could read through the shards of his own masks, carefully placed one on top of the other and overlapping in no well-defined way. Chuuya broke him down to his fundamentals, and it didn't make sense to Dazai how someone so eager to live, so eager to fit in with other people, could do that.
Dazai was supposed to be feared and hated, incomprehensible, but Chuuya ignored that fact like one would treat a barely visible scratch on a window.
(They would be older, fighting on opposite sides. Chuuya would look him in the eye, tell him he hadn't changed even after defecting, and Dazai would feel fond laughter bubbling up inside him.
Some things stayed the same.)
He hated it.
He stole an expensive wine bottle that would end up in a street-side dustbin, along with a hat that was probably a gift for Kouyou. Leapt out of the window, half hoping to never see his partner again.
*
Chuuya slammed his glass on the table. The person sitting beside him flinched.
“And then you know what that shithead does? He comes right up to me in the middle of the night because he knows when that’s when I get the most practice done! And then keeps nullifying my ability! How am I supposed to win?”
The person tightened his grip on his glass. A new recruit, or he would have known to avoid half of the infamous Double Black.
“I don’t know.”
Chuuya didn’t seem to have heard him. He absently swiped at a recent ugly bruise next to his nose. “I found out he’s ticklish though. The front of his right elbow. It’s always in a sling so I hadn’t known. And – and then he kicked me in the face so I took a pen and drew all over his face!” He cackled. “It was permanent ink!”
*
Six days into the deal, Chuuya still found himself far from his goal. He couldn’t use finer blades and needles, and Dazai taking over his room had made it all the more harder. Waking up early in the morning hadn't worked either; Dazai was an insomniac, always ready to limit Chuuya’s progress with an outstretched hand.
"Ane-san," he asked, half-asleep, "could I use your house to practise?"
Kouyou glanced his way before sipping her tea. "No."
"Please! I'll have to draw a smiley face on my hat in glitter otherwise!"
"Leave me out of your games." Chuuya's head fell to the table, nose pressing against it and likely restricting his breathing. Kouyou sighed, watching the tea in her cup ripple lightly. "But, I'll let you know a secret location you can practise at."
Chuuya's nose had a red imprint where it unstuck from the table as he met her eyes again. Had they been less formal, he might have hugged her. But Chuuya just bowed his head slightly, his thanks coming only slightly more excited than deemed respectable.
*
That night, he almost perfected writing with a blade. The blade he was using traced into the last tree beside the warehouse and clattered to the ground beside it, eventually reading out 'Dazai choked on a marshmallow'.
He ended up falling asleep on the roof.
*
"No. No. Get out!"
"But chibi," Dazai grinned, flipping Chuuya's hat off his head before Chuuya grabbed it back with his ability, "I'm not dancing to Beethoven. I won’t let you complete this." Dazai would have found a way to escape the bet even if Chuuya won, but Chuuya could enjoy his last moments of being close to victory.
The ninth night had begun. Chuuya would have been almost ready had Dazai not figured out the warehouse's location.
"I'll be writing on you if you don't get out of my way, Dazai."
Dazai adamantly remained in the same spot. A blade, much more controlled after over a week of practice, nicked at Dazai's cheek after swerving in a little so Dazai would be unable to dodge it.
Dazai smiled, teeth showing. The precision involved in the movement seemed to tire Chuuya out. "Eight," he stated.
"Eight what?"
"Eight objects you could write with are on you right now. A pen, Ane-san's lipstick, three blades, a dagger, the rough edge of a stick, a needle."
Another blade swung by him, cutting a portion of his bangs.
"You still can't use the needle though, can you?" Dazai dodged the third blade that zigzagged towards him. "Predictable."
Beads of sweat had collected on Chuuya's forehead. The amount of control required was more than Dazai had expected, but Chuuya surprised him by accomplishing it in such a short span of time. If only he worked just as hard on using his brain for once.
Chuuya directly sent the needle at him, Dazai barely managing to dodge it. It pierced through several layers of his coat.
“You can’t kill me, Chuuya. You’ll be in trouble.”
“I honestly don’t care at this point.” Grabbing the stick with his hand, he tossed it in the air before flinging it towards Dazai with a kick. What ended up being unexpected was how it boomeranged, missing Dazai the first time before spinning back and ramming into Dazai’s face.
Dazai couldn’t have predicted that. The pure delight on Chuuya’s face suggested he hadn’t expected it to work either, and he burst out laughing at Dazai’s nasal tone.
“Don’t use your coat to wipe your nose, disgusting mackerel.” Grinning, Dazai intentionally covered his nose bleed with the sleeve of his coat.
“Only if you do that again.”
Chuuya sputtered hilariously. “You're already bleeding, idiot. I’m not tossing a stick in your face again.”
“Of course chibi would think I mean that. Do the flippity flippy thing again! With the stick!”
“Flippa flippin- Oh!”
There was no chance of Chuuya winning anymore with only minutes left before the day ended. He ran a hand through his hair, half fallen out of its ponytail. Shrugged. That was a problem for the next morning.
“Shift the axis closer to the stick and adjust the force on the centre so you’ll create a smaller boomerang effect.”
“Like this?”
“No! Dumb slug, that’s too far!”
“I can see that!”
*
“Chuuya.”
“Yes, Ane-san?”
“Why are the walls covered in insults written in fine cuts and lipstick?”
“We wrote an apology letter in that corner of that wall, Ane-san. At least I did – Dazai drew a thumbs up and wrote something in ‘Elise-a-pithan’ English.”
“Shakespeare's Sonnet 18.”
A pause.
“I sent you a hand-written apology letter yesterday too.”
*
Five days later, Double Black would be asked to infiltrate a safe at the headquarters of a branch that had gone rogue. It required cracking a code, the only way to do so being snapping a set of wires in a narrow space from a fifty metre distance. The lines along which they had to be cut spelled out a word, and if done wrong, would blow up the safe. The information would be lost.
Approaching the safe directly was out of the question for the same reason.
Chuuya, who kept practising writing with a blade even after losing the challenge, did it with a relative ease the group had never expected. Dazai stood beside him, alerting him in case the blade was close to missing a wire.
Once the files were obtained, the group was eliminated.
“You knew all along, didn’t you? That's why you asked me to write with my ability,” Chuuya said, lying on the floor and resting his legs against the wall the day after the assignment. His hat sat several feet from him, its crown adorned with a smiley face in washable silver glitter. “How did you find out?”
Dazai looked up from his paperwork. An unbelievable sight, but it was likely something executive-related, or Dazai would have made Chuuya finish it for him. His brown hair stood out, glittery and messy since he hadn’t had the patience to wash his hair as many times as Chuuya had washed his own.
“The group created blueprints for new machines and had ideas for modifying our existing security measures, but they refused to show anything. Mori decided they were selling the knowledge to outsiders and exploiting mafia resources for it. Anyone could have been sent to do the job, but their security team consisted of some of the best minds in the mafia, so only someone with an appropriate ability and control could be sent. I just put two and two together weeks ago.”
"Oh." Chuuya sat up, folding his legs. “I guess that makes sense. It was fun, though. Learning I could do all that.” He clicked his tongue. “Why make it a challenge, though?”
“Proving a point to Mori. I said you could perfect it in sixteen days. He was going to send in the regular infiltration team first, but it would have caused too much damage."
“Huh.” If Dazai was giving him information that wasn't a lie, it either was low level information or had become harmless. Chuuya believed it was the latter.
Silence settled, the soft scratching of Dazai's pen against paper filling it in, and Chuuya poured himself another glass of the sugary aerated drink Dazai had bought from a store.
"Chuuya? Could you finish the rest of this paperwork?"
"I'm busy."
Dazai whined exaggeratedly. "But Chuuya, I’m bored!”
"I said I'm busy!" Chuuya turned his attention to Dazai’s black coat hanging from the door, folded in half vertically and then folded in half again over the door.
Dazai followed his line of sight. “Chibi, you’re never busy." A piece of chalk hit him over his bandaged eye. He recoiled, suddenly noting another piece of chalk making its way to his coat.
"Slug?"
He wouldn't be able to save his coat in time. The chalk was too close to it. Grabbing the other piece of chalk thrown his way, he scrambled towards Chuuya's hat, intending to scribble over it in white.
If they turned up for work the next day covered in chalk, it wasn't their fault.