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The children.
It’s always the children.
…and explosives.
The Agency has horrible luck with events involving children and explosives.
Case in point: they were called in to deal with an elementary school hostage situation. Ability related, naturally, though it was more of an excuse for the police to slack off than any sort of threat. Preliminary reports identified Tokai Sanshi as the perpetrator, who was registered as an ability user at eight years old. Supposedly, he could alter the colors of objects through physical contact. Combatively useless, but would do wonders for Chuuya’s hair.
As usual, Dazai and Kunikida are sent in as the primaries. They wordlessly split up at the first branch–Dazai taking the stairs without a second thought. He hums to himself as he walks, mentally flicking through possible outcomes. It’s strange that their Mr. Colors isn’t around to chat. You’d expect him to be making demands already… though he might just be a nutcase. With an ability like that, Dazai can guarantee he was bullied in school. Maybe he took it personally! You never know with these guys.
He tests each door he passes–perhaps more carelessly than he should, but it’s not like Kunikida is here to nag him about it. The building is eerily silent, only the clicking of his own shoes and the buzz of the ventilation system keeping him company. Unless the hostages are dead, he’ll be able to hear them from a mile away.
The farther he walks, the more uneasy he feels. The walls started out a monotone beige, but each turn presents new and increasingly unsettling pictures. They look like they could have been drawn by children, if they weren’t so… graphic. Smiling stick figures and sunflowers morph into deformed faces with sharpened teeth, splatters of red overlapping with smears of child-sized fingerprints. Dazai frowns, brushing his finger against a particular gruesome scene involving two puppies and a boulder. Blue light sparks from his fingertips and envelops the wall in a wave, erasing the shaky sunbeams and red handprints alike.
“Ah…”
Strange! Probably best to get back to Kunikida, honestly. This had been a fruitless stroll, and the longer they were in here, the higher the chance of something irritating occurring.
He hums absentmindedly, internally mapping out the building as he turns the next corner. Most schools in this area were built by the same company, and thus had an incredibly similar layout–an outer hallway for the classrooms and an inner common area. The first and second floors are the same. Barring any complications, Kunikida would have taken the same route Dazai had but slower. As long as he takes the next staircase, he can backtrack until they’re reunited! Then they can explore the rest of this creepy building together.
Pleased with this plan, Dazai kicks open another door. Empty again. He’d almost cleared the entire floor, and he’s ninety-five percent certain there are no children here. In fact, rerunning the numbers, it’s most probable that they’re either all on the top floor or all on the bottom. What kind of idiot would keep hostages on the second floor?
…hm. Now that he’s thinking about it, this is definitely something he should have considered twenty minutes ago.
Oh well! Kunikida never has to know-
A scream cut through his thoughts, followed by what sounded like twenty children shrieking in unison.
“ Fuck.” He bolted for the nearest staircase, skidding around a corner and taking the steps three at a time. Once he reaches the ground floor, the directional sounds of fighting are easy to pick up on, and Dazai doesn’t slow from a sprint until he’s reached the open door. He slides to a crouch, quickly taking stock of the situation.
At this point, the room is much quieter. He can hear Kunikida’s voice, smooth and calm as he whispers consolations. There is crying, but it sounds like the issue has been taken care of, so he relaxes his posture, stepping into the doorway with cautious motions.
With perception honed by years of experience, Dazai assesses the entire room with a single glance.
A cluster of sobbing children are strapped together with a single chain in a circle around the bomb, meaning that if they remove the bindings at any point, they’ll be able to escape. A timer is mounted above them. Kunikida is pulling helplessly at an overcomplicated padlock in front of them. His leg is bloody and twisted, and two bodies lay unconscious on the floor.
Okay. Reevaluating the severity of the situation, he discounts anything non-life-threatening and flickers through solutions. Unconscious guys–non issue. Blood–non issue. Bomb–very pressing issue. Kunikida is out of commission.
Leg. Lock. Timer.
Okay. Dazai can support Kunikida well enough. Time consuming, but manageable.
Dazai’s feet carry him forward a single halting step.
As always, he has bobby pins and paperclips tucked away into his bandages. He could pick the lock himself in ten seconds flat.
The timer flashes neon red numbers down at him.
Sixteen seconds.
The children can run. Six seconds is plenty of time for them to escape the room, at the very least. They can make it.
Kunikida turns his head at Dazai’s arrival, equal parts desperate and relieved. On instinct, his body relaxes.
Protect the orphans.
Maybe Dazai hasn’t changed at all. Maybe he’s just a horrible, greedy, selfish person at his very core, and no amount of trying will ever fix that part of him. But he wants Kunikida to be alive.
He wants .
And so, in a split second, he makes a horrible, greedy, selfish decision.
Kunikida yells and struggles and fights him the whole way, but Dazai is well-versed in making people do things they don’t want to do.
The air is bright behind them, the ashes warm in his hair.
Dazai doesn’t feel an ounce of regret.
—
The surrounding area had been unofficially evacuated at the threat, but some desperate souls had stayed behind. Parents, friends, teachers, all being held back by uniformed officers. Their desperate, tearstained faces are hauntingly still.
Dazai waves off the first responders and drags Kunikida closer to his side, ducking his head as he assesses the situation. This is going to be terrible for PR.
He slips down a side alley, swallowing down the anxiety growing in his throat. He feels the eyes of the survivors on his back.
That’s when the wailing starts.
—
“What were you thinking?”
Kunikida whirls on Dazai the instant the office door closes behind them, rage burning in every line of his frame. Dazai lets him pull free this time, and he falls heavily against the wall, seething.
“I was protecting the Agency,” Dazai defends weakly.
“We weren’t told to protect the Agency, we were told to protect the dozens of schoolchildren you just murdered .”
Yeah, that’s fair. It’s surprising enough that he hasn’t broken down yet. His anger at Dazai is probably the only thing keeping him going right about now.
“You should probably get some medical attention,” Dazai says, fully prepared to leave it at that. He has no interest in listening to the oncoming lecture, especially knowing he’s going to get twenty times worse from the President. This was easily his worst screw up to date, and with his track record? That’s saying something.
“Why, so you can run off and leave the rest of us to deal with the consequences of your actions?”
“Because you’re bleeding.” Dazai cocks his head. “And it’s Ideal to have all work-related injuries looked at by a medical professional at the earliest convenience.”
“It’s also Ideal not to let children explode !”
Kunikida is shaking all over in a way that indicates he’s probably not thinking straight. Some kind of trauma response, most likely. Possibly shock. Dazai’s not an expert.
“I know. It’s not your fault,” he says. It’ll make Kunikida more angry with him, but he needs to hear it. “I would have done it for anyone, and there’s nothing you could’ve said to change my mind.”
It’s a lie.
Dazai wouldn’t have made that decision in the Port Mafia. He would’ve put the mission before anything, including Chuuya. Especially Chuuya. In fact, he had. Many times.
Has he really changed that much? Has he somehow gotten worse? More self-absorbed? Helping people was supposed to make him better, but it feels like all he’s learned to care about is himself.
“Of course it’s not! Why would it be my fault that I got stuck with you as a partner? Can’t you ever just- just listen ?! You’re so fixated on yourself and your childish, convoluted plans that you can’t see the people right in front of you! I told you to go. I told you. I told you! ”
Sometimes, it’s hard to tell which one of them is the suicidal one.
“Ne, Kunikida-kun. They were all chained up. I couldn’t have possibly-”
“Don’t play with me Dazai.”
“Hm? What then, you think I planned for this to happen?” Dazai laughs, dry and harsh. “You got me, this was my true goal all along. What do they call it these days, the long game?”
“You know what you did.”
Before Odasaku died, Dazai hadn’t known he was capable of caring about people. He vaguely understood that he enjoyed being around Oda and Ango and was willing to refer to them as his friends, but he couldn’t have imagined that he’d feel so shattered by their loss. Now that he knows what that feels like…
There’s a crushing pressure in his chest. He can’t do it again.
He’s made too many attachments. Warning bells scream in every corner of his mind, danger danger danger , but it’s too late. It’s too late for him.
“Why'd you even bother leaving the Mafia?! You’re pulling the same shit with a different outfit on. We’re supposed to be the good guys! How can you walk away from a dying child like that? What kind of person is okay with that?!”
Ironic that Kunikida has no fucking clue what he’s talking about but still manages to hit the nail right on the head.
His stomach twists. He recoils.
“I’m trying , okay? I tried! The fuck else do you want from me?”
“Tried? You didn’t even look twice at them! You didn’t even- you- I thought…” Kunikida drags in a long, slow, breath. “I walked into that room prepared to die for them. Didn’t you?”
A band holds fast across his chest. His lungs fight to expand, but it is stronger.
“I go everywhere prepared to die, Kunikida.”
In the following silence, the band only tightens. Emotions claw at the back of his throat–the sort that he doesn’t know how to categorize. They hurt. They won’t stop hurting. His fingernails dig into his palms. He doesn’t understand.
“You should get some medical attention,” Dazai says again.
“No. I should have shot you when the President gave me the chance,” Kunikida hisses.
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Kunikida’s face twists up in ways Dazai easily recognizes. He doesn’t like this part, but at least he understands. Most people made these expressions at him. But Dazai thinks he’s okay with it this time. There’s so much to see there, ne? In the curve of his brow there is anger. In the shine of his eye there is hatred. It makes something heavy coil between his ribs.
But still, he’s glad. He’s glad Kunikida can glare and shout and bleed. He’s relieved that Kunikida can hate him.
There is no such thing as emotion without life, after all.
—
Dark eyes stare blankly into a starless sky.
He’s alone, but when isn’t he?
His phone rings and rings and never stops, a constant, grating reminder that he’s still alive. It cycles through a chorus of atrocious pop songs, one for each of his contacts, which he deftly ignores. Once, he even hears Chuuya’s ringtone, a series of high-pitched barks, distorted by the scrape of his phone against the cement with every vibration.
He ignores that too.
A part of him mourns those ringtones. He’s going to have to change them now, otherwise he’ll be reminded of this day every time he receives a call.
He understands their concern. He’s not going to kill himself over this, but he wants to. He wants to drive a pick into his eyes and his ears and his skin until he never has to experience these emotions ever again.
The worst part is that none of it is guilt. Not for the children, anyway.
He doesn’t care that they died, or that it had been his fault. A large part of him is happy for them. Envious, even.
He’s mostly confused. He normally works best under pressure. A large part of what he does involves quick thinking–strategizing on the spot and adapting to new circumstances on the turn of a dime. It’s his specialty, which is why it’s hard to pick out what went wrong. This never happens. Mori had beaten making mistakes out of him years ago.
So then why?
His head hurts, and the ringing is only making it worse. He didn’t want Kunikida to die. So? He wanted to complete the mission too. He wanted to save children and make Odasaku proud. Right? That’s what he wants?
Gravel crunches nearby. Rapid footsteps slow to a crawl once they draw close enough. He recognizes the light gait, the tentative shuffle between steps, so he doesn’t bother to look up. If Atsushi is here to hurt him, he deserves it.
A gust of wind whips through his hair, and eyes water up against it. It stills. The water stays.
The boy sits beside him, quiet with every motion.
“Ranpo said you’d be here.”
“Ah.”
Which means anyone could have come. Kunikida could have come, like he always does for Dazai.
But he didn’t.
They are silent for a long moment, Dazai splayed on his back and Atsushi with his knees pulled up to his chest
His plan, his miscalculations, all led to that moment, staring down a room full of crying children and realizing there was no time.
His relationship with Kunikida was damaged, likely permanently. Atsushi will never see him the same way again.
All because of some regular guy.
Atsushi picks up Dazai’s phone on the next ring, responding softly to the person on the other end. Dazai drags his fingertips across the concrete so hard that they bleed.
“No one is mad at you,” Atsushi says.
Dazai does not want him here.
“I should hope not. I didn’t see any of them saving Kunikida’s ugly rat tail.”
“Did you… I mean, are you okay?”
Dazai draws his eyebrows together, glancing sideways up at his mentee. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well… that was an intense mission. And Junichiro said Kunikida yelled at you when you guys got back. Which- I guess he yells at you a lot… like a lot a lot… but everyone has been really worried.”
“As you can see, I’m perfectly healthy. You can go back now.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
Ah. Inconvenient, but that was to be expected.
Still, frustration bubbles up inside him. At Atsushi, for bothering him when he really had no intention of hurting himself. At Ranpo, for sending a kid out after him. At Atsushi’s voice and Mori’s slimy smile and Odasaku for ever thinking he was worthy of this.
Dazai likes children. Not in the same way Odasaku and Kunikida do. Probably not in the same way any sane individual does. He likes their raw humanity, as genuine as fresh snow. A child does not know how to exist outside of itself. It is all at once the most logical and most emotional form of life–with no experience to build thought upon, it does exactly as its emotions dictate. It will without fail act according to the strongest motivator. Thus, it is easy to understand. Easy to manipulate.
That is, he didn’t want them to die.
(He knows it’s sick. He knows what Mori would say.)
A child is like a blank sheet of paper. Uncorrupted, yes. Overflowing with potential. But adults have been brushed with ink. They contain years of unique information, experiences, and memories–all objectively more valuable than something so reproducible as potential. It is only logical that a tree is worth more than a sapling.
He feels as though he’s missing something fundamentally human, but no matter how he looks at it, he cannot see the flaw in his reasoning.
Something is wrong with him.
He gazes up into the night sky. All he sees is endless darkness.
Everything is so pointless, in the end.
“The stars are pretty tonight,” Atsushi offers.
Dazai laughs softly. It’s a sad sound.
“Yeah, Atsushi. They really are.”