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The room was unremarkable—a private booth in some forgotten bar tucked between Ikebukuro's chaos and Ergastulum's twilight district. How it existed in a space that connected three impossible cities was a question best left unasked. What mattered was that three men now sat around a table, each wearing a smile that promised absolutely nothing good.
Dazai Osamu swirled his glass of whiskey, though he hadn't taken a sip. "You know," he said conversationally, "when Kunikida said I needed to work on my networking skills, I don't think this is what he had in mind."
Izaya Orihara leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled beneath his chin, red eyes gleaming with unmistakable delight. "Oh? And here I thought the Armed Detective Agency was all about making connections. Though I suppose your connections tend to be more... explosive in nature."
"Rich, coming from Ikebukuro's favorite puppetmaster," Worick Arcangelo drawled, lighting a cigarette with practiced ease. His remaining eye assessed both men with the calculation of someone who'd survived far worse than a battle of wits. "At least Dazai-san here has the excuse of a detective agency. You just ruin lives for entertainment."
"Entertainment?" Izaya pressed a hand to his chest in mock offense. "I prefer to think of it as appreciating the full spectrum of human nature. The chaos, the love, the hatred—it's all so beautifully unpredictable."
"Unpredictable," Dazai echoed thoughtfully. "Is that what we're calling it? I always found humans terribly predictable. Give them the right push, and they'll fall exactly where you want them to."
"Now that's where you're wrong," Izaya countered, leaning forward with sudden intensity. "The patterns are predictable. But the individual choices within those patterns? The exact moment someone breaks? That's the artistry."
Worick exhaled a stream of smoke, his expression somewhere between amusement and exhaustion. "You two are talking about people like they're chess pieces."
"Aren't they?" both men said simultaneously, then glanced at each other with matching grins.
"Jinx," Dazai added cheerfully.
Worick took a long drag from his cigarette. In Ergastulum, he dealt with Twilights, gang wars, and the constant weight of surviving in a city that chewed people up and spat them out. He understood cruelty—he'd lived through it, wore its mark on his face. But these two operated on a different frequency entirely. They didn't just survive chaos; they cultivated it like a garden.
"So," Worick said, deciding to redirect before this turned into a philosophical nightmare, "anyone want to explain how we ended up in this particular impossible scenario? Because last I checked, our cities don't exactly exist in the same reality."
"Does it matter?" Dazai asked, finally taking a sip of his whiskey. "We're here now. Three men who understand that the world is a stage, and everyone else is simply playing their part."
"Three manipulators walk into a bar," Izaya mused. "Sounds like the beginning of a joke."
"The punchline is that nobody gets out alive," Worick finished dryly.
"No, no," Dazai corrected, his smile widening. "The punchline is that we all walk out alive, and it's everyone else who suffers the consequences."
Izaya laughed—genuine, delighted laughter. "Oh, I like him. Worick-san, you're being too pessimistic. Think of this as a meeting of minds."
"A meeting of minds that have collectively orchestrated enough suffering to fill a small country," Worick pointed out. But despite his words, there was something almost relaxed in his posture. Perhaps it was easier, in a strange way, to sit with people who understood the weight of manipulation. Who didn't pretend to be anything other than what they were.
"Suffering implies intent to harm," Dazai said thoughtfully. "I simply... arrange circumstances. What people do with those circumstances is their own choice."
"You sound like a defense attorney," Izaya observed.
"I sound like someone who's thought about drowning himself in every body of water between here and Yokohama," Dazai corrected pleasantly. "But that's beside the point."
Worick barked out a surprised laugh. "You know, most people don't lead with their suicidal ideation."
"Most people are boring."
"Fair enough."
The conversation continued as the whiskey flowed—three devils trading observations about human nature, swapping stories carefully edited to reveal nothing important while saying everything necessary. They spoke in layers of meaning, each comment a probe, each response a carefully constructed deflection or revelation.
By the time the bottle was empty, nothing had been resolved, no alliances formed, no real information exchanged. And yet somehow, impossibly, all three understood each other better than most of their closest associates ever would.
As they stood to leave—back to their separate, impossible cities—Izaya paused at the door.
"We should do this again," he said.
"We absolutely should not," Worick replied.
"I'll bring the poison next time," Dazai offered helpfully.
Izaya's smile was radiant. "I knew I liked you."
The door closed, and the impossible room ceased to exist, leaving three men to return to their respective stages, their respective games, their respective chaos.
And somewhere, in three different cities, people felt an inexplicable chill and wondered why they suddenly felt like pawns on a board they couldn't see.