Generations of Rain || Dazai Osamu/Reader

4. piano.

It's night time, and you're tracing lines and shapes onto your husband's chest. Your throat still felt sore from crying out his name: How strange is it that pleasure should sound like pain, like you were escaping annihilation. The blankets that he has switched out from the soiled ones are crisp and fresh against your skin.

Odasaku's flesh felt solid, like the wood surface of the bar in Bar Lupin.

"Penny for your thoughts?" He asks, taking your moving hand in his. His big hand eclipses yours as he laces his fingers with yours, before lifting it up to lips to press a kiss against your knuckles. You sigh.

"Just thinking about how lucky I am, married to you."

He blinks. "You don't think we got married too early?"

"I love the kids, I love you. I don't see a problem when I see my life with you, eternally."

He hums in deep thought. You close your eyes, snuggling against his arm, before you hear someone playing the piano. You can't recognise what they're playing, but it's pleasant enough for you to reopen your eyes and tilt your head up to your husband.

"Hear that?"

He pauses. "Hear what?"

"That," You gesture outside the window, where the dark sky of night seemed like a tarpaulin: covering something beyond the painted surface. "You can't hear it?"

"No."

You close your eyes and when you reopen them, it's morning.

Must have been one of your neighbours.

It's a welcoming gesture to another painful day in your life as you blearily blink the sleep away from your eyes.

You turn your head to the side, arm following suit. Your bed is a queen-sized bed, and your pillow's pair is empty; fluffed up but empty. You put an arm over where your husband should have been, and fresh pain oozes out of your heart like blood to a pinched cut. You sigh and turn your head back to the ceiling, watching the slow moving rotation of the ceiling fan slowly pulling you back to sleep.

Clang!

A pot falling. You grunt and open your eyes. Your slippers are by the side of your bed as you shuffle your feet into them, sluggishly walking towards the direction of the noise: the kitchen. There you find Dazai in a comically frilly, pink apron, putting a pot back into its original position on top of the fridge.

Ever since you two decided to live together in the Agency dorms did his fridge begin to empty itself from sake and crabmeat to actual ingredients, partly due to your nagging and worries. Dazai looks at you apologetically.

"Did I wake Her Majesty up from her beauty sleep?"

You snort. "Yeah. What're you doing?"

"I got us some pre-prepared breakfast bentos," He says, pointing at the duo of opened food boxes on the kitchen counter. The bentos are nothing short of perfection, side dishes neatly arranged to the left with the white block of rice gleaming under the weak lights of the kitchen. "I got us the same ones because we could be twinning."

His words make you smile. A smile that splits your lips. Can't have happiness without pain, as usual. "I'm starving."

"Well, we can eat now," Dazai brings the bento boxes to the table outside in the living room, where he sets them down onto the wooden surface. You help him by bringing two pairs of chopsticks and setting them on the table, and sit across him with your legs crossed over each other.

"Itadakimasu," The both of you say before digging in. The food tastes like the standard Japanese convenience store bento boxes, but you don't mind; for some reason, knowing that Dazai went out of his way to get you breakfast early in the morning makes it taste all the better.

You must be some sort of anchor for him to try and understand how human beings work and function in society. After all, knowing from your husband, you're more than sure he would have spiralled into a debauched state of sake and tinned crab meat without a care in the world about his eating habits.

"How does it taste?"

"It's good," You say, swallowing a chunk of rice. "It's good. How much was it?"

"Don't worry about that," He flippantly waves his hand as he puffs his chest in pride at your words. "You don't have to pay me back."

"Are you sure?" You say. "I'm more than happy to reimburse you if you need—"

"Really," His face curdles into that of seriousness. "I'm more than happy to take care of you."

You frown. "If it's because you feel guilt over Odasaku's death, it's fine. I'll be okay."

"No. It's because you're my true friend," Dazai says. He puts his chopsticks down and laces his fingers together. "You're the only one I have left."

You blink, before sighing. "You're just as dependent on me as I am with you."

Dazai smiles sadly. "We're all we have left. There's nothing left for us anymore."

The two of you eat in silence. He finishes his food before you, which leaves him staring at you in silence as you continue to eat.

"What's your plan for today?" He asks, resting his chin on his fingers. You shrug, holding a piece of eggroll between your chopsticks.

"Stay at home. Too many things outside make me sad," You pause. "That sounds so pathetic. I'm not a hikikomori, I swear."

"I get it," He says, sympathetically. "I do."

"Well, you better get going," You check the clock on the wall: it read 8:30. "You might get another tongue lashing from Kunikida."

"Ah, he's always like that," Dazai waves a hand dismissively. But he still stands up and dramatically brushes the imaginary dust off his knees before grabbing his coat hanging by the door. "But I'll see you later! Take care, (first name)~"

You can hear his footsteps behind the closed door and you turn your head back to your food. When you finish, you bring both Dazai's and your empty bento boxes into the kitchen, where you dispose of them carelessly. You wash your hands under the sink and shake your hands from the moisture, and head back to the living room.

You sit on the floor, crossed legs, and stare into space. The silence is not as oppressive as you feared it would be. You were right, but with a slight misconception: it was not that too many things outside made you sad, but you yourself made yourself sad. The sadness was coming from within, like water to a long blocked geyser. Odasaku's death has ruined you for everything; and you knew that. You're no longer the happy, young woman who was married to her husband. You've lost it all. You are a refugee in your own grief, fleeing from yourself to escape the pain. All grief says the same thing: that it's love's souvenir, but for you, the world holds your hope by the throat and says: This is how it is. The bullet that had ended your husband's life also landed in your heart; straight to the heart. You've been cut off from real life and in this strange isolated patch of yourself, isolated from progress. You don't believe in anything anymore; the only thing you believe is that Odasaku is dead.

What a miserable life to live, you think to yourself. But it is what it is.