Chapter Text
The ceiling of Dazai’s apartment was a map of cracks he’d long since memorized. He lay perfectly still, pinned to the mattress by the sheer weight of existing. The sheets felt like lead where they touched his few glimpses of skin - rough, suffocating, and entirely too present. In the dark, without the Agency’s noise to drown it out, his own heartbeat was an intruder, a rhythmic thumping that reminded him he had failed to stop breathing again.
He didn't move to turn on the light. Light required a face, and Dazai didn't have one ready yet. He just lay there, a hollowed-out thing wrapped in graying bandages, wondering at what point 'Shuuji' had stopped being a boy and started being a ghost that refused to leave the room. He reached out a hand to the bedside table, fingers brushing against the cold, metal edge of a discarded bottle. He wasn't waking up; he was just transitioning from one kind of nightmare to another.
Once the corpse's rotting mind started envisioning the morning glow filling his room, Dazai forced his long limbs upwards. He didn't want to get up but the tormenting idea of pity from his subordinate was more horrifying than living and breathing any longer. He put one leg in front of the other until he stumbled against the bathroom sink. Dazai's days varied from a manageable numbness to a hollow, aching void, but today belonged to the latter. It was one of those mornings where the air felt like wet wool in his lungs and the mere sensation of his own reflection felt like a physical assault.
He gripped the edges of the porcelain sink until his knuckles turned a bloodless white, staring down at the drain rather than the mirror. On his better days, he was a master of the stage, a man who could weave a coat of armor out of jokes and distractions. But today, the heavy lifeless skin was winning. The weight of his own history felt like it was dragging his bones through the floorboards, and the thought of living as dazai for another day was as disgusting and hideous as swallowing a mouthful of glass just to keep the silence at bay.
Dazai twisted the tap, letting the water spit against the broken spout, as he slowly splashed the water over the dying face in the mirror. He grinned slightly as the water ran down and through his bandages, leaving a numb but burning feeling on his skin. He quickly turned the tap back off and grabbed a fresh new pack of skin from the cabinet behind him. He attached them over his now soggy rotting ones and tightened the weave until his circulation screamed, effectively stifling the 'Shuuji' that lived in the pulse of his wrists. He didn't bother drying the excess water; he simply let the dampness seep into the new layers, a cold reminder of the corpse he was still dragging behind him. With one last glance at the mirror—not at his eyes, but at the set of his mouth, he practiced the curve of a laugh. It felt brittle, like thin ice over a deep, dark lake, but it would hold. It had to.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
The slow, artificial thrum of the city prepared Dazai as he approached the Agency door. He took a breath—a sharp, shallow thing that barely reached his lungs—and strutted into the scene.
The office was a battlefield of normalcy. In the corner, Kenji and Kyouka were huddled over a stray dog found on the doorstep; Atsushi was dutifully filing paperwork nearby. Normally, a stray was a one way trip to the shelter, but the dark red stains of human remains on the animal’s previously white paws had turned a rescue into an investigation. It was the kind of gruesome puzzle that had forced even Fukuzawa’s hand.
But the real chill didn't come from the blood on the floor. It came from the desks across the room. Kunikida was frozen in his chair, and Yosano sat perched on the edge of his desk, her face set in a look of deep, clinical ponder. There was no barked reprimand for Dazai's tardiness; no frantic checking of the ideal notebook. Just a heavy, suffocating focus that made Dazai's damp bandages feel like ice against his skin.
The only flickering spark of relief came from the realization that Ranpo wasn't in the room. Dazai knew the detective’s piercing green eyes would have stripped him to the bone in seconds, filling the hollow cavity of his chest with a suffocating mix of guilt and exposure.
He crossed the floor with a lightness he didn't feel, dropping into his chair with a forced, lazy grace. Across the room, Kunikida remained a statue of grim industry, and Yosano stayed uncharacteristically pale, the kind of white that usually only followed a difficult surgery. Dazai kept his gaze fixed on them, his own damp bandages beginning to itch like a crawling infection under his skin.
Finally, he broke the silence, the sound of his voice hitting the air like a discordant note in a quiet room.
“Sooooooo,” he drawled, tilting his head with a jagged, artificial curiosity. “What’s the verdict? Did someone finally manage to kill the mood in here, or are we all just practicing for a wax museum?”
Instead of the expected shout or a pen flying at his face, the office remained suffocatingly quiet. Kunikida didn't even look up from his desk, his shoulders tense and rigid. The only response Dazai received was a dark, filthy glance from Yosano, her purple eyes tracking him with a clinical coolness that made his skin itch.
Across the room, Kenji let out a small, innocent giggle, completely oblivious to the rot filling the room as he distracted the stray.
Atsushi, looking thoroughly exhausted and anxious, approached Dazai’s desk. He had taken the dog from Kyouka and Kenji and was now holding it carefully, to avoid the dark red, flaky stains on its paws, though the metallic scent of old blood still clung to its fluff.
"They've been like this since this morning," Atsushi whispered, his eyes wide with a mix of worry and frustration as he looked toward the senior detectives. "It's a new case. They completely refuse to show any of us what's in the file."
Dazai forced his lips into a wide, theatrical pout, leaning back in his chair until the wood groaned beneath his weight. He didn't look at the dog. He couldn't risk letting his eyes linger on the rust-colored stains destroying the white purity of its fur.
"Oh, Atsushi-kun, don't look so miserable!" Dazai whined, waving a dismissive, bandaged hand in the air. "You know how Kunikida-kun gets when his precious schedule is disrupted. He’s probably just throwing a tantrum because he found a typo in his ideal budget. Adults are terribly boring creatures when they haven't had their morning tea."
Before Atsushi could offer a relieved smile, Kunikida’s fist finally slammed onto the mahogany desk. The sound was sharp, heavy, and entirely devoid of his usual performative anger.
"Atsushi," Kunikida said, his voice flat and dangerously quiet. He finally looked up, but his gaze bypassed Dazai entirely, fixing onto the white-haired boy. "Take Kenji and Kyouka down to the street. Meet the veterinary contact from the Special Division and hand the animal over. Now."
Atsushi blinked, pulling the dog a little closer to his chest. "But Kunikida-san, the reports-"
"Senior staff only, brat," Yosano interrupted, though her tone lacked its usual playful bite. She slid off the desk, her heels clicking like a countdown against the floorboards. "Go. Don't make him ask twice."
The heavy door clicked shut, the sound echoing through the vacant agency like a guillotine dropping. The lingering scent of iron and damp fur remained, a ghost in the sudden, crushing silence.
Dazai didn't move. He kept his lopsided smile plastered to his face, though the skin beneath his fresh bandages felt entirely frozen. "My, my," he sighed, threading his fingers together behind his head. "So serious. Did Mori-dono fail to pay his taxes, or are we—"
Kunikida didn't let him finish. With a slow, deliberate movement, he picked up the yellowed manila folder and slid it across the mahogany surface. It skidded to a halt right at the edge of Dazai's desk.
"The Special Division found it hidden in a false floorboard within the ruins of an old underground clinic," Kunikida said, his voice flat, stripped of all humanity. "The records date back twelve years. Human experimentation, asset trafficking, pediatric logging. The police can't identify the main subject because the paperwork was partially burned, but his designated title is repeated on every single ledger."
Yosano walked over, stopping right beside Dazai's chair. She didn't look at his fake smile; she looked straight down at his tightly wrapped wrists.
"They called him a prototype," she whispered, the room suddenly devoid of air. "But the ledger lists his birth name. Shuuji."
Dazai’s heart didn’t skip a beat—it stopped entirely. The brittle ice of his smile remained frozen on his face, but beneath the desk, out of sight, his fingers dug into his own skin until the fresh, clean bandages began to bloom with red.
From where he stood near the window, Fukuzawa finally spoke, his stern face darkening with absolute disgust.
"It gets worse..." the President started, his voice a low, heavy rumble that vibrated through the floorboards. "There's evidence of sexual trauma and exploitation in here as well. Whoever ran that place didn't just experiment on that boy, they did the unthinkable… To a child.”