Generations of Rain || Dazai Osamu/Reader

9. hate.

It's a quiet day.

"Promise me you won't pull that kind of stunt away while I'm gone," He says, curling his fingers and protruding his pinky: A promise. "Promise me."

You stare at his fingers. "I don't know if I can make that promise and stick to it."

"At least try to?" Dazai's voice takes on that of a man pleading for his life, as if you were his lifeline and the embodiment of everything good in this world. You sigh, before hooking your pinky against his. Your hand is warm against his dry, cold, bony hands, and it almost thaws him down to the marrow.

"I'll try," You say. Your voice is heavy, leaden with exhaustion and homesickness. Homesickness for a memory that is no longer your friend, but an enemy. "I'll try to."

He's off on a mission with Atsushi to investigate some sort of terrorist activity in the Yokohama subways, and you're left to your own devices in this lonely, deserted house of his. You graze your hand over the paper walls and wonder what they've seen while he was alone; you wondered if they were haunted with sights of Dazai, and moved as houses do when there's nobody there.

You take a quick shower and keep your hair dry, because it's not the day to wash your hair yet, and dress yourself in civilian clothes. You say civilian clothes because everyday it feels like you're in a war, a war that you're so desperately fighting against with everything you have, in clothes that were built to ward off bullets of pain and shrapnels of annihilation. It's summer so it's hot and humid out, and your neck already starts to prick with sweat the moment you step outside. You should have bought a drink with you. No matter; you'll just pick one out at the nearest convenience store.

You're automatically walking towards the Agency because you're a danger to yourself when you're alone, and you recognize this, not through your own eyes, but in the sepia shades of Dazai's eyes when he found you holding that glass bottle in the bathroom. Your steps are lacklustre and dull but are efficient in their mission.

You pause in your steps and look up at the sky. You wonder if Dazai would have died if Odasaku continued on to live. You wonder if the death of your husband warranted Dazai's survival, and that in this universe, only one could survive.

Your husband didn't. And in his absence did he leave behind an echo. Odasaku did not protest his death, nor did he agree. He said his final words and was followed by silence. His silence is huge with a haunting echo. One of these echoes were you: his wife. His fiancée. No time for formal weddings. The silences in you.

Reverberating silence.

Odasaku.

The Agency is empty when you walk through the door. Nobody is there; not even the secretaries. The door creaks and closes behind you before it clicks shut. You stand and stare off into the distance, your eyes like a sad bloodhound's gaze, fixed on the blandness of a passing scene, while in one hand it was clenched into a fist by your side.

You glide through the rows of tables like a ghost with no home, no roots, no abode. Your hand rests on the corner of one of the tables and you stare out at the large window, where Yokohama was laid out before you in all its summer glory. People laughing, holding hands, chatting in the cicada buzzing air with the occasional honking of cars and a revving engine. The beeping of a stoplight. The scream of an overjoyed child.

"You must be (last name)." A deep, clear voice snaps you out of your loneliness. You turn to the direction of the voice, and you're met with metallic blue eyes. What a strange thing to be called by your name sometimes; it felt as though your name was a geographical site where embattled forces played themselves out despite you. Blood was shed on your name. In your name.