Chapter Text
“Ango, give me a location.”
“Two blocks to the south should be where the items themselves are located and being transported. There should be minimal interference there. Most of the security will be focused on misleading us while the transfer is completed. The back entrance of the building on your left is a loading dock, which is where they should be concentrated.”
“Thanks, Ango!” Dazai began running towards the loading dock.
“Hey, wait for backup, idiot!” Kunikida called over their comms.
“I’ll be fiiine.” Dazai was great at sneaking around and catching people by surprise. He could asses the situation before Kunikida and the enforcer with him, Yosano, arrived. He assumed that Oda was the only one tasked with stopping the transfer, which shouldn’t have been too difficult. Oda was a great fighter, very well-trained and calm under pressure.
“I’m almost there,” Oda’s voice came over the comms. “Status?”
“About to gain a visual on what’s going on.” Dazai was careful as he approached the loading docks, ducking behind a garbage dumpster across the street. Once settled, he popped his head up to look. It took him a few seconds to process the situation and what it meant.
The loading dock was empty, both of people and the illegal technology they were meant to be transferring.
“Shit.”
Before he could say anything, the comms burst to life. “Need backup!”
A chill ran down Dazai’s spine. That was the first time he’d heard Oda sound anything other than calm.
He started sprinting towards the other location. Kunikida was talking in his ear now, but he was focused on only one thing. He needed to get there to help his friend before something bad happened.
In the back of his mind, Dazai had a thought that this was the reason why he shouldn’t have started caring about people. This was why he should have kept his mentality from the Mafia, where pushing people away was a form of protection.
He pushed the thoughts back. It would be fine. There would be no reason to feel that way, because Oda would be fine, because Oda was one of the few people he cared about and he couldn’t not be fine. Dazai was good at his job so he would get there and help and they’d both go back at the end of the day and have a drink. He should have gone with him in the first place, but this was fine, he and Kunikida would salvage the mission.
As he rounded the corner, his heart beating hard, dominator ready to shoot, he felt like he had never wanted something so much in his life as he wanted for Odasaku to be okay in this moment.
The next moment reminded him why he had spent his whole life trying not to want things at all.
Odasaku was on the ground, on his back, gasping for air. The people who had attacked him were gone, though Dazai heard Kunikida say that he would be checking the area with the others after he called for medical assistance. Blood crept along the spider web of cracks in the pavement and Dazai’s breath caught.
No.
Dazai ran towards Odasaku and knelt down next to him, not caring about the blood. Odasaku’s face was painfully pale, but he was still alive, his eyes focusing on Dazai’s face.
“Odasaku…” Dazai’s voice caught in his throat as his eyes drifted from Oda’s face to the injury. His chest was covered in blood, a mangled mess, like he’d been stabbed multiple times. “Help is coming. It’ll be fine. It’ll be —”
He reached out to place his hand over Oda’s chest in hopes of stemming the blood flow, but Oda caught his wrist in a weak grip.
“They won’t get here in time.”
Dazai’s eyes widened. “Odasaku, please —”
“Listen to me, Dazai.” Oda’s voice was rough and it almost sounded like he was choking. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth.
And yet, Dazai stopped struggling. Oda was the calmest person in the world, and for him to be stern enough to ask Dazai to listen was a rare thing. Dazai felt compelled to listen because deep down he knew help wouldn’t come fast enough. He knew exactly how long it would take for them to get here, what they had with them, how long it would take to get back...it was hopeless.
Oda dragged in a breath. “Dazai...I know we’re trapped in this system, but you can still live in a way that helps people.”
“What?”
“I know you.” Oda’s grip on him tightened. “This...you’ll try to use it to say this is why you don’t get close to people, this is why this job is bad, there’s no difference between here and the streets, you and I will be criminals either way.”
Dazai swallowed. He and Oda had never talked about it at length, but both of them were jaded with the system, as many Enforcers were. They were trapped in their jobs forever, unless they wanted to spend that time trapped in a rehabilitation facility.
“My job is to save people, right? But I can’t save the people important to me — I can’t save you, so what’s the point? Why should I stay?”
“I don’t know what will happen to you,” Oda admitted. “But I think if you keep working to save people, it would be a little bit better. I gave you a second chance because I think there’s something in you...that can save people. Extend your hand to someone else and give them a second chance. I think you might find satisfaction...or a reason to live.”
“How do you know?”
“How could I not? I’m your friend.” Oda let go of Dazai’s wrist. In the distance, Dazai heard sirens, but they were still too far.
“I’ll do that,” Dazai promised. He hoped Oda could hear him. He hoped the words got out through the grief that was starting to choke him.
Oda didn’t say anything. Minutes passed in which it felt like there were no sounds, and then the sirens cut through everything.
Dazai watched as they took Oda’s body.
It was a promise he was making to a dead man, but Oda was the only one who had ever believed in him.
Maybe one day he’d believe the same things of himself.
*
“Dazai, we don’t have the manpower to train a new recruit.”
“It’s okay, Kunikida-kun, this upstanding young man has what we call ‘raw talent.’”
Kunikida narrowed his eyes as he took in Division One’s newest member, a young boy named Atsushi. Dazai had not mentioned finding Atsushi on their last raid of the slums in an effort to stem a series of murders currently plaguing the city. He had not mentioned going to the rehabilitation facility and offering Atsushi a job, and now that Atsushi had a job as an Enforcer, he certainly had no plans of telling Kunikida why.
There was a practical reason and then a reason that Dazai didn’t really want to talk about. Atsushi was useful as someone who had been in the city’s underground for a few years after escaping an orphanage. He could survive, and he had a fight in him that Dazai thought would be useful for the job. Their Division was sorely lacking, and Dazai wanted to have the strongest team possible for what was to come, because the newest series of murders seemed like more than just an average serial killer.
A new body had been found earlier and they were meeting to go over the new evidence. Not that any of the bodies helped — none of them left any indication of who the killer could be. Each body, however, was a calling card, because each body had the heart carved out of the chest. All of the hearts were missing from the crime scenes.
Dazai’s stomach turned when he thought about it, because he could only thing of one person that could get away with such a crime and do so with such surgical precision. He didn’t like thinking about his past with the Port Mafia, but he needed to bring up their boss, Mori Ougai, as a suspect.
Something in the back of his head told him that he was looking in the wrong place. Mori didn’t take prizes like that, and he wouldn’t want to draw attention to himself or the Mafia unnecessarily.
But Dazai really, really wanted to see that man rot in a facility somewhere for trying to take Dazai and twist him into something cruel, something that he was still actively fighting against to this day, and something he sometimes gave into because this job could bring out the worst in people just as it could bring out the best.
He needed to find a way to resist more than to give in. Right now, he still felt like someone on the edge of being that young boy who would kill on a whim if it benefited him, or even if it didn’t, just to try to feel something. Other things made him feel now, but those things came with risks. He didn’t want to lose those things, so he was always trying to keep them at a distance.
He managed to craft a careful balance of all of his feelings and urges and wants until now, but this case was tugging at him. He got the feeling it would test him.
Bringing Mori into it was only the first test. Even if Mori wasn’t responsible, it would be prudent to definitively rule him out. So after Kunikida went over the details of the body and the circumstances under which it was found, Dazai raised his hand.
Kunikida nodded at him.
“The Port Mafia Boss, Mori Ougai, used to run a clinic in the slums,” Dazai said. “He seems like an unassuming doctor, but he has extensive medical knowledge. I don’t doubt that he’s capable of this, so we should look into it.”
“Do we have a motive?” This question came from Yosano, who had been a medical student before her crime coefficient inexplicably dropped. She’d figured that her knowledge could be useful as an Enforcer, and that it would still be a way of helping people. It was also more exciting than wasting away in a rehabilitation facility, since she knew that no one was ever really rehabilitated.
Dazai shook his head. “Mori did some surgical extractions for the black market,” he said. “Surprisingly, people still sell organs and stuff like that. That’s the other thing — this is explicitly organ removal.”
Yosano nodded. “And all of the victims die in the process. But it has to be quick, since none of them are found even though they must scream or struggle, and there is no other cause of death. He’s not killing them and then taking their hearts. They’re alive for that part.”
“Motive,” Kunikida said. “What is it?”
“That’s the hard part,” Dazai said. “We might not even find a motive until we investigate further. But it’s something we can go on.”
“And if it’s the wrong direction?”
“We should find out sooner or later. Either way, we can keep Mori in mind and use the evidence we find on this body to try to rule him out or lead us to him.”
Kunikida sighed. “Fine. Fine, let’s just —“
“Can’t Ranpo-san help?” Tanizaki, another of the Enforcers, asked.
“Ranpo-san has the day off and asked that no one disturb him.” Kunikida looked like he wanted to say something about that, but he didn’t. Ranpo was the most respected Inspector in the Ministry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau.
Besides, Dazai was sure that Ranpo would have a lot to say once he came back to work. He never needed time to catch up, and he almost always brought the case even further than where it had been before.
The only person who hadn’t spoken this entire time was Kyouka, who was sitting next to Atsushi. Kyouka was a rare case for the MWPSB and one that Dazai was extremely interested in despite not having brought her on. One of Atsushi’s conditions for joining had been that Kyouka, another patient he’d met in the rehabilitation facility, be brought on as an Enforcer when she became of age.
When Dazai looked into it, he was told that he could have her tested. The tests came back showing a high aptitude for the Enforcer position, so despite her only being sixteen, she was allowed to join the MWPSB on a trial basis.
Dazai was interested in her because he found it hard to know anything about her. Her parents had died and Kyouka had apparently killed the murderer, before being taken on by some organization and being used to kill others. Dazai believed it to be the Port Mafia, though Kyouka never said who it was.
When they first met, she seemed almost emotionless, but she opened up around Atsushi. She was someone who had become cold and practical to cope with what had happened, but at heart she was a smart, young teenage girl who wanted to be close to others and wanted the people around her to be safe.
Atsushi was looking at Kyouka now as if he thought she might say something, but Kyouka only shook her head.
Kunikida stood up. “Dazai, Yosano, you two will accompany me to the crime scene. Hopefully we can find something.”
*
The crime scene was the same as the others, in that there was nothing leading back to a possible killer.
Robots scanned the area and bagged samples to take back to headquarters, but Dazai knew it was a lost cause. The victim didn’t give anything away, either. The murderer seemed to choose people indiscriminately.
“You have to admire the handiwork,” Yosano murmured as she knelt close to the body, that of a young woman.
“Do we,” Kunikida said, mouth twisting in distaste.
“It should be helpful. Not many people are capable of this. But it’s not,” Dazai said with a sigh. “If we didn’t know who Mori was, nothing would lead back to him.”
“We can’t keep waiting for more bodies to come in to get more clues,” Kunikida said.
That was exactly what Dazai had been planning to do, but he could see where Kunikida was coming from.
“Then what should we do?” Yosano asked. “We can always try to bring Mori in for questioning, but that won’t go well. Trying to bring in the Port Mafia Boss with proof would be hard enough, let alone without proof.”
“Unfortunately,” Dazai muttered.
“Whoever it is, they’re getting braver,” Yosano added.
That was true. Earlier cases had taken place in isolated areas. With each murder, the location of the body became less and less isolated. Dazai got the feeling that soon there would be a body found in a very public place.
Suddenly, all of their wrist communication devices went off. It was Sakaguchi Ango. Dazai wanted to dismiss the call, but Kunikida picked up.
“Inspector,” Sakaguchi said, his voice a bit breathless, “you must come back immediately. Someone from the Port Mafia turned himself in saying that he has information related to the serial murders.”
That caught everyone’s attention. Dazai felt his heart speed up — had he actually been right?
“Why?” He asked.
“He wants to talk to the Chief. Barring that, he will talk as long as he’s given his records.”
“Records?” Kunikida frowned. “He’s risking imprisonment over records? I’m assuming those living in the slums of the city can’t get access to their records but surely there is nothing remarkable about them.”
Dazai had a sinking feeling.
“I attempted to view the records myself to see who he was,” Sakaguchi said, “but the records are classified. The reason they are classified is likely the reason he wants to know.”
“What’s his crime coefficient?” Dazai spoke up suddenly.
“It wouldn’t be read,” Sakaguchi said.
The others glanced at each other in confusion. Crime coefficients were the basic measure of a person’s mental state and likelihood of whether or not they were capable of committing crimes. They could always be read.
“The system wouldn’t reveal it,” Sakaguchi added.
Dazai’s mouth went dry. If this person was who he thought he was, then he knew exactly what was in those records. No one besides Mori knew he knew, so he would have to pretend he didn’t, but it would be so easy to solve this problem in order to solve the case.
That information was a big reason he was jaded against the system, but oddly enough as years passed, it also made him feel like what Odasaku said was true. It might be possible to save someone.
“What’s his name?” he asked.
“Nakahara Chuuya.”
Dazai took a deep breath. “Let me talk to him.”