𝐇(𝐀)𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 | yandere! dazai osamu

7 / 15

AUTHOR'S NOTE

—

I have to say that this is a slight canon-divergent story. All the characters and establishments are there, but I'm playing around with the characters given.

Also, if you've read No Longer Human/The Setting Sun by the actual author, you can see I've taken direct quotes from it. I've also picked some other quotes from Dazai Osamu's other books, just to fit the nihilistic character of Dazai. 

If you have a problem with that, boo hoo, what're you gonna do? ask for a refund for money you didn't pay? 

—

There were so many paintings in the room, alongside chairs turned on their heads, scattered on the floor, aprons hanging from hooks on the wall, books and still-life fruit products rotting in their bowls, flies swarming around their blackened-but-sweetened flesh. Some were dazedly bumping into the easels and canvases: fermented fruit meant alcohol.

In the corner of the room was a stack of mannequins. Some had their heads still attached, but the others had their heads rolling on the floor. You supposed the mannequins were used for some sort of clothing model—some had pieces of clothes still hanging off their wooden frame.

"Did something fall here?" Dazai asks. He walks carelessly into the room, delicately avoiding bumping into the chairs, before taking a seat on one of the stools. He sits—he brings both legs up, tucks one under the other, while the other leg was bent and supporting his arm over the knee. You reluctantly follow him.

"Does this not give you the fucking creeps?" You ask. You stare at the paintings, all of which were old people immortalized, their deaths a repetition, corpses embalmed with paint. It was not their empty, seemingly evaporated puddles of eyes that stared back at you that scared you, but that the art itself personified these people into deaths that would never come to an end, a death that could constantly be replayed and redefined with every eye that set upon it. You bend over and look one closely, examining with a sliver of apprehension at the detail of the face, with how each shade seemed to correspond to the most minuscule of muscle: a true appreciation for the human body and all its grotesqueness. "Why're there so many?"

"Maybe they were an art collector," Dazai says. He slides his fingers over the canvas: dust greys his finger pad. "Oh, I nearly forgot. Here, catch."

You turn around just in time to catch a small plastic bag, containing: a bottle of sake, a can of crab meat, water, and packets of dried fruits. "What'd you get this for?"

"Well, I don't want you to die," He says, frowning at you. You sputter and try to shove it back into his hands, and he simply just puts his arms up in surrender. "Nah-ah, you need it more than me."

"But I can't pay you back!" You pat down your pockets to check if you had anything of value to give. Dazai shakes his head.

"I don't want you to?" You look at him with a defeated look, one of panic and worthlessness, and Dazai shakes his head. "Oh, don't look at me like that!" He dramatically puts the back of his hand against his forehead. "Women! Degrading themselves to such service duties. It's a tragedy, really! Is it really a crime for me to let a woman be on the receiving end?"

You pout. "It's not that...I just feel...kinda bad?"

He waves his hand at you. "Really, it's no problem. If I didn't want to do it, I wouldn't bother at all."

You nod and then take out a can of crab meat. "Crabmeat?" And then drop it back into the bag.

You take a seat on one of the stools, dig through the bag, and make yourself unaware of the fact Dazai seemed to be studying you. With the sunlight that burst clean through the window, clearing your eyes and making them shine like gleaming stones, you almost looked angelic; a part of him thought your beauty was frightening him, as if someone as precious and celestial like you should only be kept in the most intimate parts of his heart, a place where no one could sneak a peek into, a place where only someone could know you were there through the faint last echoes of his voice, like the core essence of you preserved in his tongue, breathing your songs and dialect interwoven with his. Yes, that sort of primal desire.

Raw light pours from your smile when you turn your head at him. "What are you staring at for?"

"Mhm, nothing," he hums. He props his chin upon his knee and watches you bite into a strip of dried mango.

"Why are you here?" You ask and regret the abrasive edge of your voice. "I mean, like, don't you have better stuff to do...?"

"I absolutely don't!" He says cheerily. "I don't want to go back to work and I have a strange fascination with the beautiful women in Gothic houses," He cheerily says, taking note of how you seemed mortified as his compliment. "Besides, I want to spend my time with people who don't look to be respected. But such good people don't want to spend time with me, apart from you."

You chew on the dried fruit. "I think it's all futile."

His eyes light up in interest. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. And I don't want to come off as someone who's angry because I didn't make it," You swallow the final bit of the fruit. "But when you take the vast, broad, wide world, and believe the social hierarchy of Japan is all there is to life... I think it's dehumanizing. I want to believe there's more to it. My mom always said that money is life's end goal, and what you do with that money, whether that be traveling or buying good food—that's life. Find a man and settle down. But it's all so...holist. Hollow."

Then you toss your head back and let out a wry, strained laugh, and Dazai instantly recognizes that of submission. It was as if you had spoken something that warranted a backhand slap; as if you had said something that constituted as an out-of-line action; and it was that choked noise of laughter that outlined the evasive and submissive nature of your core: you were beaten into it.

"How about you?" You finally ask. "What's your opinion?"

"I think this world has taken no pain for granted," He says. "When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn't write a novel, people said I couldn't write. When I acted like a liar, they called me a liar. When I acted like a rich man, they started the rumor I was rich. When I feigned indifference, they classed me as the indifferent type. But when I inadvertently groaned because I was really in pain, they started the rumor that I was faking suffering. The world is out of joint."

"Maybe it's because pain is so hard to record," You say, after a while. He looks at you in surprise. "How can you record pain? We can only feel it after it's done. Then we just chase after a glimmer of its original source. It's not definite. And something as indefinite as that doesn't have a place in this rigorous Japanese hierarchy."

He smiles sadly at that. "Maybe. It may not have a place, but it does have a worth—it can be capitalized."

"Yeah, true," You take a swig of water. "You got snake oil and religious scams."

"You speak from personal experience, right?" He asks. You sigh and your shoulders sag.

"Unfortunately." And then you clam up, unwilling to open.