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"Come in already," Chuuya muttered. “How did you even find this apartment?” He planted a tracking device, how else. Yesterday, all of Chuuya's safe houses turned out to be empty and impersonal, so today Dazai did everything he could to find out where he lived.
(These apartments have always been like this, a voice in his head whispered to him, you just didn't pay attention to it.)
"I can’t in good consciousness tell you everything, Chibi," Dazai snorted and put his foot in the doorway anyway, just in case. Chuuya could go berserk in a second, despite all the apparent calmness. He didn't get mad. He just rolled his eyes and disappeared inside the apartment, leaving Dazai standing in front of the door with his mouth open and his leg outstretched.
"Close the door with the lower lock, two turns," Chuuya shouted to him from one of the rooms. Dazai didn't push his luck – he leaked in even without opening the door even more and turned the lowest iron handle twice. It clicked, he must say, much louder and much more than twice – the lock on the door was incredibly complex.
This safehouse of Chuuya's, unlike the ones Dazai had already visited and in which the wine cooler always seemed to be the most frequently visited place, looked and felt like someone lived in it.
The area was much worse than the others, the old house and one of the two non-working elevators seemed to hint, but Dazai thought that everything inside was no different from the expensive, sophisticated and slightly pretentious apartments that Chuuya preferred. He was wrong.
This apartment was smaller and obviously older than all the others. On a fairly new cabinet, one wing had a handle that was different from the others, and the edge of the shelf was slightly bent. On the table in the living room, which was slightly visible from the hallway, there were apples, but not those very long-lived green ones, but reddish-yellow ones, with the side already dented. There were fewer than full napkins in the napkin box.
The hands of the clock hanging in the living room stopped at five minutes to twelve. At eleven. Chuuya either didn't care enough to change the batteries, or forgot.
"You came here because you have nowhere to sleep," Chuuya said reproachfully. This was, of course, not true, Dazai definitely had a place to sleep! But to live… But under the heavy gaze of the multicolored eyes, he did not object, only nodded. "I knew it.”
"On the couch?" Dazai drawled as Chuuya pulled out a stack of fabrics from some closet and dropped them on the couch with a thud. Fortunately, the sofa was already upholstered in fabric - he once slept on a leather sofa on a mission. It was uncomfortable.
"Say thank you for not sleeping on the doormat," Chuuya snorted, and yes, Dazai exposed himself to this joke. But the jokes about Chuuya and his dog-like devotion are funny, sue him. And the fact that Chuuya responds to these jokes brings him joy.
While Chuuya went into the kitchen and was rustling around, Dazai tried to check all the rooms on principle. In one room there is a bed, a wardrobe, bedside tables with lamps on them, an ikebana on the windowsill - everything normal. Everything is in perfect order, as if whoever lived here cleaned before the arrival of the guests. It doesn't look much like Chuuya’s room - the bed is a double, the mirror is right by the bed…
The second room had to be opened with a lock-pick. It's an office that vaguely resembles their own in the main building, except that it's smaller. Books, cupboards, and a large table with papers and photo frames spread out on them. On the edge there is a mock-up of a skull.
"Get out of the room," came a voice from behind him. Chuuya wasn't screaming, but he wasn't just angry, he was furious, as if Dazai hadn't entered the room, but had destroyed Chuuya's whole world.
"Get out, I said," and Chuuya's booming voice sounded intimidating. Dazai looked around the room. An ordinary office, perhaps a little less spacious, due to the couch on the side. And then Chuuya reached through the doorway, grabbed Dazai by the collar of his shirt, and pulled him out of the room as if he weighed nothing.
"Let's go eat," Chuuya muttered more calmly. "And if you say a word about my cooking, I'll rip your head off," and he dragged Dazai along by the collar.
They ate in silence. Chuuya took out everything that was in the fridge and somehow mixed it so that it didn't even seem messy and unpleasant. Dazai had never had much of an appetite, often he could only swallow pills and whiskey.
Chuuya mixed his medicine into the food he liked and stayed silent for a long time if Dazai didn't eat everything his partner brought him. He had to eat. Of course, they never talked about it.
"You forgot a T-shirt once," Chuuya shared when he had already finished everything and was watching Dazai with a piercing gaze as he wielded his chopsticks. "I'll return it now," Dazai didn't answer him.
The T-shirt he'd won at some fair, with its silly print and stretched collar, still smelled a little like gunpowder. Although maybe Dazai just imagined it because of nostalgia - immediately after that fair there was a scuffle and the Double Black significantly thinned the ranks of the opponents.
As if Chuuya knew that Dazai would not be able to sleep without full darkness, he closed all the curtains and left the living room in complete, impenetrable darkness. Dazai hugged his legs to his chest and stared into the void. The sofa was soft. For some reason, he wanted to cry.
(Somewhere in another world, in the same apartment, fourteen-year-old Tsushima Shuji was being treated for an overdose by Kashimura Kensuke, the “good doctor" and his wife, Nakahara Fuku. Somewhere in another world, when asked “what makes a person human,” Nakahara Fuku led him to cook soup with her, even though cooking was not her strong suit. Somewhere in another world, Dazai Osamu was picked up not by the doctor who created the “immortal division”, but by those who made sure that the dead stayed dead during the war. Somewhere in another world, Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuya had never been in the mafia.)
Towards morning, Dazai finally decided to leave. He looked back at the dark apartment. So quiet and peaceful, without voices buzzing in his head, with the quiet chime of the clock.
(If Chuuya had asked, he would have stayed)
[Error! There is no such universe]
(If Chuuya had asked, he would have stayed)
[Error! There is no such universe]
(If Chuuya had asked, he would have stayed)
[Error! There is no such universe]
(If he had asked, Chuuya would have gone with him)
He turned away, closed the door and ran out of the apartment as if it were on fire, and Dazai was followed by a kerosene trail. Chuuya went abroad in the morning.
And the following week, Odasaku died.
Chuuya wakes up early. Earlier than the god to whom he places an altar, lights candles and prays.
"Considering all the mishaps of your family," Arahabaki begins, and Chuuya prepares for the craziest thing in the morning. C’est la vie. "If by the time you're twenty-three you're not dripping with grief, don't cut your throat with your own hands, don't start experimenting on your relatives, and don't marry a jerk, that's an achievement. And if you don't get hanged for treason by the time you're forty, it'll be rather nice."
“Who are the first two and the last one?” Chuuya asks the ancient god, who grumbles like grandfather. It's already clear about the two people on this list: his uncle experimented on relatives, and his mother married a jerk. According to Arahabaki, of course, ignoring his almost brutal desire to keep Chuuya’s father's office intact.
So strong that he even took control of his body. Not in battle, just to say a few words in front of Dazai.
"You can even search for the latter on your Internet," Chuuya rolls his eyes. You're an old man, Arahabaki, that's what you are. "Your grandfather's brother. Your grandfather was involved too, don't worry, it's just that Harumi was better at getting out of trouble than her husband and brother-in-law," they are silent for a while, and then Arahabaki adds softly.
"I don't want to talk about Saiki and Nobuko. Scatter ashes for them too," Chuuya does not argue. Whoever Saiki and Nobuko were, their end was not a happy one. Ashes are like candles for the Christian god, only not veneration, but burial. Chuuya lights a fire in his palms and watches as the pieces of paper with names written not in his hand burn.
Arahabaki is the god of destruction, but this is far from the end. The destruction of this universe, at least, will happen in the same way as its birth – one day the world will shrink back to a point and explode. Gravity, eternal expansion, and inevitable destruction.
And Arahabaki keeps an eye on people struggling with gravity. That's why he knows Russian. He's loved dogs since Laika died in space, and cats since the arrival of Fellicette. He watches how people show humanity to robots, whose connection will soon be cut off, and the inhumanity they show to those who have returned from orbit for the sake of a little knowledge about space.
Chuuya loves space too.
"Wow, he didn't even go through the fridge," Chuuya thinks out loud. He doesn't know how he feels about this: he's glad that Dazai has shown respect for his personal space for once, or he's damn upset that Dazai, with his very strange attitude to food, didn't eat anything except the plate of everything that was given to him yesterday.
"That's because no one but you will ever eat this soot with dried cranberries," Arahabaki grumbles. He likes milk chocolate sprinkled with sugar, and Chuuya gets a toothache even from thinking about it. So he pops another bar of his dried cranberry soot into his mouth. It’s just dark chocolate.
The laundry is neatly folded on the couch where he almost forced Dazai to lie down yesterday. But there is no T-shirt. The door to his father's room is closed and obviously no one has touched it. The front door slammed shut, but open – Dazai didn't have a key.
And apparently he wouldn’t ever get one.
When Chuuya returns from the mission, his car explodes. The only good thing is that it's not one of the ones he got from Albatross after he died. Chuuya might not have forgiven that.
Arahabaki becomes the patron god of runaway children. He had already been the god of one-way travels for a long time.