It takes two to create a whole | Soukoku Au |

Torment Of The Past

Chapter warning | minor PTSD attack, unconsented kiss |

With each passing sunset; each pass of the school-day, things began to return to their calmer state. While Chuuya's nightly routine hadn't stopped, drinking himself to sleep each night in hopes to be completely rested didn't do much. Maybe it was the added stress of knowing he could have been tossed out had he done any serious damage. How he hadn't gotten in trouble with authorities was beyond him.

He'd stopped being so easily agitated, gone back to his classes to manage his internal anger. Dazai quickly resumed his hobby of breaking girls' hearts into two. When he wasn't doing that, he was playing chess, or wasting time talking to his "friend" Fyodor. The two of them shared the same intelligence, the same boredom with the world. It was rare to find a person who could read the other like books, all because it's how the other would act in situations. Given Dazai preferred to take his stress, and bottled up pain out with a good make-out, while Fyodor took it out by tormenting people in cruel mental battles. He had a lower score in their game of broken hearts, but a higher score in the amount of mental pain he'd caused his victims. Between leading girls on, to which he had no interest in, and going as far as to twirl a boy into submission and dependence, he was inexplicably cruel when he was bored.

Dazai often skipped his classes to submerge in stress relief. Often in the same area of the campus. A field in the north campus that happened to lead into a small circle of trees where the students into nature would hang about and intrude in useless chatter. During his second period of the day, where he should be "learning" a useless skill to him named math, something he could do in a seconds flash, he tended to relieve stress. Nobody was ever back here during this period, most students were too busy socializing closer to the building if they had a free period. The other students never went near the woods, the occasional students that passed wouldn't see much. Dazai had a very specific spot he used for quick make-out sessions. A single tree with a trunk thick enough to hide him from shoulder to shoulder, adding a good two inches on either side of his shoulder. Surrounding the tree lay bushes and small ferns that provided a small coverage for anything on the more explicit side.

Normally there wouldn't be anybody but one or two passersby in this area. Normally, Chuuya took his free period to the library, but he insisted on finishing his project with inspiration from the fall leaves. He was warm enough in his coat and the hat that covered his head. After glancing around the area, Chuuya tucked his hair from his shoulder so it was away from his face. He removed his books from his bag and began sketching some more designs and patterns. Even when he erased his gloved hands delicately brushed over the page. His intense collection of tools laid sprawled around him. All sorts of things for shading and smudging lines. He had pastels and chalk as well as pencils, constantly flipping through pages to go over the different media and decide which he thought worked best mixed together. He played with colors that contrasted the fall leaves, but still appeared to fit in an autumn setting. A brief smile passed Chuuya's lips as he listened to his headphones and sketched away.

All was peaceful for a good fifteen minutes until a certain male appeared before Chuuya. White, nearly gray hair styled obnoxiously, as usual, happened to pop from nowhere. Chuuya looked up to see the remnants of his hospitalization. There were still a few unhealed cuts despite the several weeks that had passed. Those injuries made Chuuya feel confident and proud. Maybe it was because all the emotional pain he'd suffered had been turned into the physical pain of the one who had hurt him back in high school. "We really were the only friends you ass could grab. Then again, who wants to be friends with a slut or somebody who backstabs everybody they know?" Chuuya began collecting his things with glaring eyes. "You're even wearing stuff that makes you look more feminine again. What happened to the whole "I'm only going to wear hoodies and shit?" Chuuya managed to collect his things, placing them into his bag, before snapping up at Shirace.