The day I pick up dazai

Chapter 3

The younger former cop has no idea what has happened to him.

He was abducted while he was patrolling the underground bunker, but he only realized that he has been abducted much later, when he found himself in the dark, unable to move his muscle.

He is sitting. On a piece of concrete at the foot of a pile of debris, like a prisoner. He just woke up and cannot understand what condition he is in. However, even before his brain wake up, he is clearly aware of one thing. Pain.

His body is in pain. A heavy, sharp pain is rushing through his whole body like an unpleasant signal, making his skin tingle. But he can't tell where the pain is from. More than half of his brain is still buried in a muddy coma.

This is an abandoned section in the depth of the underground barrier.

About ten years ago, there was an explosion of a oxygen cylinder used for emergency rescue here, and it has been in half-collapsed state ever since.

There are gaps crawling like living creatures on the wall and the ceiling, and countless debris pilling up. The debris come in different sizes, from the size of a fist to a size of a car. And the steel wires used as foundation material are poking out from the gaps like wild plants.

He is sitting at the end of a dimly lit tunnel, in a narrow passage blocked by debris. On top of the debris that is just the height of a chair. Or rather, he has been sat there.

He cannot move on his own.

Because his hands and feet have fixed. His two hands are sandwiched between large pieces of debris. From the elbows up, they are tightly pinned by the debris that look like a mouth closing. The debris is not heavy enough to crush his arms right now, but is not light enough for him to pull his arms out by himself.

"This is... is..."

His voice is cracking in despair.

Because he saw his feet.

Two stakes are piecing through the insteps of his feet, into the floor.

They are old construction wooden stakes. They have the thickness of a thumb, old and rusty. They are piecing through his leather shoes, his skins, his flesh, his soles and finally into the floor. Fresh blood is still there, spreading in circle on the ground.

Someone has stitched his feet to the with those stakes. For what?

"You are feeling in pain."

A cracked voice comes from the darkness.

The young cops turns to the voice of the frightening face.

"Pain is good. Pain is proof that you are alive. There are even better things. As the pain get stronger, it can control us, change the way we think, and sometimes even blow away our personality. Do you know why that is a good thing, Today Akihiko-kun?"

The voice is intimidating, assertive, and filled with raw danger with bleeding wound. It is high-pitched as that of a young boy, but it lack the human-like characteristics a young boy should have.

The man in the shadow. That is Dazai.

"It is because it continues to show us that our personality, our soul, is nothing but a convienient and unstable hypothesis based on primitive instincts such as pain and fear."

Dazai smiles thinly. Most of his faces is covered in bandages, so only a small smile can be seen through his slightly narrowed eyes and his mouth, which is distorted and white like th shape of a shamshir.

"You are... the injured person... at the house..." The cop named Toda speaks in a wheezing tone, as a person with faint consciousness would do. "How do you know my name?"