blood money || YANDERE!Chuuya Nakahara

Sixteen: Slipping.

You know you're slipping. Like liquid. And if you weren't spilling, you were escaping through the confines of the glass by condensation, drooling down the sides slowly but surely.

What was it you were looking for? What did you want? What were you feeling?

Was it guilt? Was it...satisfaction? Was it fear?

You're cradling your head in your hands, rocking back and forth in the confines of your room. The walls are closing in on you, like a forever constricting heart; you feel more like a walking cadaver than a person.

The light is dimming, the water from the port flattens out from grey to deep dark-grey blue; the sun sets, colouring the sky like an obscured klieg light, out of sight from your childhood windowless room. There is no escape from this room other than the singular entrance, bland and brown in design. There is nothing in the room that denotes a personality: there is a white futon on the floor, a desk, and a round light on the ceiling. Perhaps the only thing that did give away a sliver of identity was the en suite bathroom, which you had spent hours in bathing in, staring at the ceiling with a mindless stare, unblinking with your knives and gun by the sink. They would sometimes be dropped into the sink, still bleeding as though they were your victims, slowly dripping crimson down and diluting with stray water droplets.

Your phone rings on the closed toilet seat.

"Hello?" You sink into the water, sighing softly as the warm waters lapped over your chest.

"Hello~" A sing-song voice on the other end.

"Dazai?" You blink your eyes open, staring through the steam, the heat making your head feel light and airy, "Why're you calling?"

"We caught Fyodor," He announces, "He wasn't at his base, but was at a cafe; we arrested him just now."

You can hear someone ask him who he was calling in the background: An American accent.

"Congratulations," You slowly say. You clutch your phone between your head and your shoulder, starting a clap with your water-dripping hands, "Here's a round of applause for you."

"Thank you," He says, a smile evident in the lilt of his smooth voice, "I heard you had an episode from someone earlier, while trying to catch Pushkin."

You sit up on the bathtub. Water smoothly lets you through as you hang an arm over the tub, "Who told you?"

"Doctor Yosano," He says, "She said that Mori was lying to you."

You close your eyes and slide back down into the bathtub, the water engulfing your shoulders; the water breaches your privacy, your private space, with ease, glueing onto your skin and dripping off your arm when you lift your phone above your head. You don't want to hear the rest of his words.

So it was true. You did see someone before you.

Mori was lying to you. So was everyone else.

"Bye, Dazai," You say. Before he says anything else, you hang up and drop your phone onto the bathroom's tiled floor. It falls with a clatter. You keep your eyes shut and let the water bury you as you slide further and further down, until it clogs your ears and congeals over your face: eyes, mouth, nose, before everything is submerged.

Bubbles escape and tickle your face as you scream into the water.

XX

The Port Mafia hallways are thick with unerasable blood; it hangs in the air like Christmas decorations, flashing and blinking in your vision, peripherals expanding them into blurry orbs as you walk through them with your hands in your pockets. You turn a corner and bump into one of the executives, Kouyou Ozaki. Her hair is impeccably in shape, not a single strand out of line, her red eyeshadow like a crane's brow on her eyelid. Her kimono is pink, trailing behind her like a snake.