Chapter Text
Dazai Osamu opened her heavy eyes, blinking away the awful brightness that lay before them.
They were almost nauseatingly bright, flickering a bruised violet as they buzzed in the way all cheap fluorescents do. A low chorus of mechanised beeping grated against her eardrums as old polyester sheets rubbed and itched at every inch of her exposed forearms. Her head ached and her eyes burned with sensitivity and exhaustion but Dazai Osamu was very much still alive. Shit.
Well, that was only to be expected really. What with the last fifty seven attempts on her life so far this year also failing miserably. This was the fifty seventh(?) attempt on her life so far this year, and despite how the newspapers raved on about suicide rates spiking over the Christmas period, in Dazai’s experience there was always some annoyingly timed and overly cheerful holiday shopper ready to pull her out of a ditch and drive her to a hospital this time of year.
Speaking of, this place was far too quiet to be any kind of mainstream hospital. And far too dingy to be private, with its flickering lights and grimy bedsheets. Dazai ground her teeth together and fought the urge to roll her eyes. Underground hospital. Just her luck; shady doctors always wanted some kind of payment, even when you never asked for their help in the first place.
Dazai rolled her aching neck to one side and then the other, retinas still cringing under the searing intensity of the room’s lighting.
She caught the shadow of something lingering by the doorway. Well, someone. Almost certainly a man with the way their broad shoulders teased the threshold of the door.
“You just gonna stand there?” Dazai called towards it, despite not particularly caring about the answer.
Or, at least, tried to. Her voice was painfully hoarse, a bloody whisper that just barely made it up her throat and past her lips. Stupid failed drownings and their aftereffects.
“Maybe.” The shadow chuckled in response. “Why, do you want to see me?”
Dazai fought the urge to roll her eyes a second time (her impending headache was big enough without aggravating it any further). As jarringly bright as the light in her hospital room was, the same brightness apparently didn’t extend to the corridor outside, and the man in the doorframe was swamped in darkness to the point she couldn’t quite make out his face.
Again, not that she really cared. Her first and only priority was leaving this place as fast as humanly possible and coming up with a plan that would hopefully actually kill her this time. Though, with her luck, that would probably never happen.
But back to the mystery man at her doorway.
“You were out for quite a while.” He started again, his voice thick and lovely like an aged wine or small measure of honey as it trickled down the hollow walls and filled the silent air. “You had me worried for a moment there.”
And there it was. The cloyingly sweet tone that prefaced any request these kinds of men had for her.
“Come into the light.” Dazai called, already starting to grow bored of this game of cat and mouse she never agreed to play, and half to her surprise, the man did.
The room’s fluorescents greedily kissed his frame as he approached, flooding him with their pale purple glow until the vague black blob he’d been a moment ago started to separate into different colours and shapes like a camera lens coming into focus, revealing his soft lavender button down and the green of his semi-formal dress pants. The only part of him that remained dark was his hair, an inky mass of black that blended neatly into the darkness beyond.
He was lean and decently tall – and almost certainly pushing thirty – but even Dazai couldn’t deny he looked good for his age. Sharp, with no traces of silver except for the glean of the doctor’s stethoscope hung around his neck.
“My name is Doctor Mori Ougai. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dazai Osamu.”
Oh.
Oh.
So that’s what this was. It wasn’t just a coincidence that she was taken to an underground hospital, she’d been searched for. Interesting.
The doctor’s smile grew like a crack in plaster as the silence between them stretched on, like he could see all the cogs turning inside Dazai’s head and relished in being the one to make them spin.
“You were brought into this hospital after you attempted suicide three days ago.” He continued on, inching his way towards the hospital bed like a spider. “Do you remember?”
“Suicide… suicide.” Dazai mused. “Nope! Sorry, don’t recall. I do this kind of thing a lot so you might have to jog my memory a litte.”
Mori’s smile tightened like a muscle around a wound.
“Quite.” He hummed, unimpressed. “Three days ago you jumped into the Ooka River at a point about half a mile or so from here. Fortunately for the both of us I was just walking into work from the station when I saw you jump.”
“And you jumped in after me? My Prince Charming!”
The doctor’s smile returned.
“I won’t pretend I rescued you for any selfless reasons.” He said plainly. “You see, I just so happen to be one piece down in a game of chess I’m playing, and I’d like you to be my queen.” Mori’s eyes flashed a bright fuchsia. “I want you to help me take control of Yokohama.”
Ahh, so that was the play here.
Dazai didn’t even bother to smile. Another copy and paste mafia servant willing to trade everything for a sliver of glory. How dull.
“And what would I get in return?”
“Your half of it all.” The dark-haired man replied easily.
Dazai made a face. “You know I don’t really care about any of that.”
Mori smirked guiltily. “Yes, I do.”
“Then what’s really in it for me?”
“Let’s just say, if you help me out with my problem, I can help you out with yours.”
The doctor gestured vaguely at the hospital bed Dazai found herself in and for the second time in years Dazai found herself slightly interested in what another person had to say.
“Okay, deal.”
Mori grinned. “Tell me, Dazai, have you ever heard of an organisation known as the Port Mafia?”
She nodded wordlessly. Growing up in the streets of Yokohama Harbour it would be something of a miracle if she hadn’t. The Port Mafia was notorious for having its hand in the business of all the other gangs in the city, controlling them all with an iron leash and a group of the most dangerous Ability wielders this side of the Atlantic. Dazai’d managed to avoid it this far, but looking at the steady gleam in the doctor’s amethyst eyes it wasn’t hard to guess what his next words would be.
“Congratulations, you just became its newest member.”