Death Becomes Us (Dazai x Reader)

Chapter Thirteen

Life cycles in odd ways. The Greeks wrote about history repeating itself, that the past always reappears just not necessarily in the way you expect it to. Y/n knew it to be true, she had witnessed it for herself.

Since she had left the Agency, she had tried her best to make an honest living. Not being able to use her real name, having no references for jobs, it hadn't proven itself to be an easy task. When she'd taken her first black market job, it had been simple. All she had to do was spy on a CEO for a few days and report back what she had discovered to the anonymous person who had hired her. She had rationalized it, saying it would be her only job like this, saying she just needed it to keep a roof over her head while she continued looking for a real job. CEOs tended to suck anyways, tended to abuse their power and beat down the less fortunate. She spun it back to herself like she was doing the world a favor.

It didn't take long after that for her to realize that the only sort of job she was going to be able to get under a false identity with no contacts in the world and an ability that decided to manifest itself at the most unfortunate times was through the black market.

It had been two years now. Her hands were thick with blood.

At first, she'd only taken jobs spying on people or stealing from big companies. Those were never enough money to keep her fed for long and so, she began to take the harsher jobs. Before long, there was a gun in her hand and a body count. Before long, there was no way out.

The job hadn't been all that unusual. She had been making dinner for herself a few nights before when her work phone had rung. Quickly drying her hands on her skirt, she grabbed it and accepted the call.

It had been a long day. She had been forced to kill again. When she had arrived home, she had cried. 

Y/n had learned to be careful with crying over the years. For a little bit, it was okay. If she let herself go too long however, she had learned that she would lose herself. It she let herself cry about anything other than her victims, if she let herself cry about them or about anything that had happened, she was done for.

She tried her best to be good. Once her position as a black market assassin had been solidified, she never took more money from a job than the bare minimum. The rest she donated to homeless shelters, orphanages, charities for people that needed it. None of it ever did a thing to assuage the guilt that bit at the corners of her soul.

She had picked up the call.

"Hello?" she sighed into the unknown.

"You're the one they call the Angel of Death, right?" an electronically modified voice had replied.

She groaned in irritation at the name. It was a moniker given to her by one of her main employers, and not one she liked at that.

"That dick, thinking he can just give my number away to any one of his fucking friends." she mumbled to herself before answering, "Yeah. What do you want?"

"You know, if I was a police officer, that wouldn't have been a very wise way to respond." the caller teased.

Y/n pinned the phone between her shoulder and her ear, turning back to the stove and giving the vegetables she was sautéing a stir.

"If you were the police it wouldn't matter what I said." she hummed, "What do you want?"

"I'm sure you've heard the rumors of a giant white tiger appearing in Yokohama?"

Y/n almost laughed.

"No?"

"Oh, uh, well..." the speaker had clearly been expecting an affirmative response, "thats been happening. My boss is willing to give you seven billion yen if you can capture the tiger, preferably alive."

This time Y/n really did laugh.

"I'm not a zoo keeper."

"And this is no normal tiger. The Boss believes it to be some sort of were-tiger, and a very valuable one at that apparently."

"My life gets more ridiculous every day. Also, if the tiger is a were-tiger that means they're also a person? Don't call them an 'it,' thats just rude."

"For seven billion, it is whatever the Boss says it is."

She was silent in thought for a moment. Her vegetable done, she turned off the stove and turned her back to it, leaning against the counter as she took the phone back into her hand.

He was right. Seven billion yen was a lot, enough to be life changing. Enough for her to keep up her monthly charity donations and have a relatively comfortable life for herself for at least a year.

"Fine." she sighed, "Whens the deadline."

"Three days."

"Done. Meet me with my money tonight and I will have him for you by then.

"No deal, you'll get your money when we have our tiger."

"Ah, no deal then. Unless you'll be willing to do half now and half later?"

The man was quiet for a moment.

"Deal."

"Great. I'll text you a location to leave the payment."

With that, she had hung up. The man had stayed true to his word and left a briefcase with thirty five billion in it in the top level of the random parking lot she'd sent him to. After that it hadn't been too hard to find the information about her target she needed. After all, a tiger wandering around a city was one of those things that made the news.

Carefully, she tracked the sightings to a small village and after doing some research into missing persons cases and recent events, found an eighteen year old boy had been forced from an orphanage there around the same time the tiger had first started showing up.

She hadn't actually meant to run into him the way she did. Y/n's plan was to go out searching for him sometime in the early evening. She really had just been running errands. It was by complete and utter chance that she spotted him across the street when she did, a far off look in his eyes. She had hurriedly crossed to the other side and thanked the gods that she had decided to bring the materials she needed, just in case.

As she had bumped into the boy, she had used her bags hitting the ground as a distraction. Her first action was not to pick up her groceries as she had made it appear, but rather to slip the pointed end of the small tracking device into the rubber sole of the boys shoe. It had gone off without a hitch.

The only downside had been that, apparently, the boy worked for the Agency now. Y/n watched the little flashing red dot of his location as she took a bit of her dinner. It certainly complicated things but, she had no way out. That was the problem with getting the money first. Yes, it kept her from getting scammed but it also bound the contract.

She set her chopsticks on the table and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her eyes and groaning lightly.

Yes, it certainly complicated things. She was going to have to be careful.