Generations of Rain || Dazai Osamu/Reader

1. the rain.

It's raining when Dazai breaks the news to you. A strange, eerie, monotonous rain that bangs on the windows like a man consumed by apoplectic rage, with the equally strange man standing by the entrance of your flat soaked to the bone.

You usher him in, chastise him like a mother would with a towel hung over his head, before he tells you, staring into space as though not there at all:

"Odasaku's dead."

You come to an abrupt stop in drying his hair, darkened by rainwater. Your hands fall to your sides and Dazai makes no attempt to comfort you; after all, he was staring into the abyss, a swirling torpedo of isolation raging within him, thunderstorms of regret and anguish flashing in his eyes like dappled shadows dancing across the room.

"What?" Suddenly, you find it difficult to swallow.

"Odasaku's dead," Dazai repeats. This time, he turns himself to look at you, the fluffy towel on his head slipping off and crumpling to the ground. "He's dead."

He repeats himself like he can't believe it himself. The bandages are long gone from his face but he looks at you as though you're transparent, diaphanous. His face is a trapdoor, breaking under your feet and landing you into the scene of the crime: Odasaku, your husband, dead on the floor.

"...How did he die?" Your words are strangled out of you.

"Bullet. He died almost instantly."

Your face becomes wet, and you only realise you're crying when a tear drips down the side of your nose. You lean against the wall and grip your shaking forearm with your other hand. You grip the tangible flesh as hard as you can, but you can't move a step, the man before you blurs before your eyes, you wipe a fresh wave of tears off your face and grit your teeth in a fruitless attempt to put yourself together, but you are powerless against the words that has just been spoken by the brunette in front of you, nothing has any power against it. You try with all your might to force yourself something; a laugh, a word, but all that comes out of you is a series of strangled noises that sounds akin to the noise of a shot horse—a noise of pure anamalia pain, and you can't manage a single word, and so you stand against the wall, wretched and helpless, horribly paralysed and you can't help it, and tears and more tears are running down your face.

Grief comes in waves, with each wave becoming more and more lethal before you're drowning in its oscillating surface.

"Almost?" Your voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. You don't realise you've slid down the wall, legs unable to handle the weight of his words. The ring on your ring finger seems to spasm around it, as though disappearing when its pair fell to the floor with a bulletshot.

"He had some words to say," Dazai says, his voice steady; though when you listened carefully, there was an element of horror in the way it shook in the slightest. "He said he loves you. And that he's sorry it turned out this way."

That's the finishing blow for you. You bow your head into your hands and scream, weeping and sobbing with the cold ring pressed against your forehead like a rosary.

The rain continues to fall outside.