Archive of Our Own ^beta

It is the rainy season in Amsterdam, but of course, it is always the rainy season in Amsterdam, or the cloudy season, the sky heavy like a bag of bones, making aeroplanes shake violently as they descend to the ground. Chuuya is on one of those planes, covering his ears with his palms as the pressure makes him feel like his temples are going to explode. Later, a stranger accidentally hits him with his suitcase while taking it out of the overhead compartment, and Chuuya has to pretend that he’s okay, even though his soulmate somewhere out there in the world is probably feeling like they got a concussion or a merciless hangover. In this regard, his soulmate is the luckiest person on Earth, because if there’s a thing that Chuuya hates the most in existence, it’s physical pain. Existence itself is physical pain to him most of the time, too, but he doesn’t have the guts to end it all, not here, not at this age, not like that. Turbulence, tempest. The sky is heavy on his shoulders. He crosses himself before landing, even though he believes in no god. His hand tightening on the seat’s armrest. What if the pilot fails? What if he doesn’t land the plane but crashes it into the ground, all Chuuya’s bones crashing with it like shattered pottery? 

Nonsense. 

Welcome to Amsterdam. 

The local weather is…

This is when he stops listening, still coming down with the aftermath of another flight. 

Rimbaud is supposed to meet him at Schiphol, and it would be a shame if he didn’t, because Chuuya has no idea how he’s going to carry all of these suitcases without his car, and splurging on a taxi from the airport? He’d rather save up for something nice. 

He has a month ahead to kill, staring at the canal outside the window of their rented apartment, the city slowly sinking underwater, and Chuuya – with it, barely responsive, pale, scarred. 

“You’ve been eating less lately,” is what Rimbaud says instead of hello, his all-time favorite reproach, but this time, it is actually true. Chuuya can barely force one meal a day down his throat without feeling nauseous afterwards. “God, look at these wrists of yours. La peau sur les os.”

“Yes, thank you,” he mutters as he shoves the first of his suitcases into the trunk. When Rimbaud keeps staring at him, arms folded over his chest, expecting a better answer, Chuuya sighs and forces a tired smile, meeting his gaze. “You should treat me to dinner, then.”

“I’ve been meaning to.”

Later, as they’re sitting at their table at Ciel Bleu and waiting for appetizers, Arthur touches upon the topic Chuuya would rather not talk about. “Have there been any new..?”

“No,” he shakes his head immediately, cutting him off, pretending to play with a napkin under the table, silk with the restaurant’s name embroidered into the corner of the fabric. “Over two weeks now,” he scoffs to himself, still not looking up. “I wonder if they finally put him in a straitjacket.”

“No straight jackets for you, kid,” Rimbaud attempts at humor – he rarely succeeds – just on time when the waiter brings out their main course, placing the plates on the table. Chuuya doesn’t laugh – only hums. Arthur takes a sip of his wine, rubs the tip of his nose with his index finger, and draws in a deep breath. “So, is it how it is, then? Not a single scratch?”

Chuuya smiles with the corner of his mouth. “Not a single bruise.”

The first one revealed itself on his skin shortly after he turned fifteen, as expected. He was positive he hadn’t hit himself on anything in the past week, which is why the bruise, rich violet sprawling over his right shoulder, felt like an honor. Like a coat of arms – a pride to wear in some circumstances and an absolute disgrace in others. He waltzed around their Parisian flat in circles, demonstrating the bruise to Rimbaud and Verlaine a dozen times a day, wearing a prideful smile on his face. His older brother – and also a legal guardian ever since the death of both Chuuya’s parents – and his husband only exchanged dubious glances, a sense of worry clearly reading in both. Chuuya knew exactly why they were worried, but just one bruise meant nothing so far. Anyone could fall, crash into a wall or a door by accident, sleep-deprived, or even slip on the ice; it was winter, after all. The first bruise wore off in about a week, fading into green and gold, without leaving a trace. 

Then came a thousand others. 

Every single day, Chuuya woke up with a new bruise: on his arm, on his knee, on his stomach, on his lower back; it felt like someone was generously stamping him with minor injuries in his sleep. He started wearing long sleeves and ditched shorts even in summer – he didn’t want anyone to see and wonder if he was, god forbid, abused at home. The better question was – 

What in the world are you doing there?

He never got an answer. The bruises hurt. Then came scratches. Minor at first, as if left by a cat, but then, they, too, started growing bigger and more frequent. Is your body being dragged back and forth over the asphalt every single day, dummy? Chuuya looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t believe what he saw. He, so careful, so serene, so… gentle, was suddenly turned into a battlefield, and he couldn’t do anything to prevent further scarring. He even pondered getting a tattoo or two once he was of age to cover the most sensitive spots. 

Now, he is nineteen, and he still hasn’t had the guts to book an appointment at the salon. 

His âme sœur has been giving him hell for four years now, and still no message from the universe. Chuuya would gladly request an audience to spill out everything that’s stacked over time and probably even blurt out that he doesn’t care if he ends up living and dying alone; he doesn’t want a walking injury for a soulmate. 

The pain precedes everything else. The bathroom cabinet and the drawers in Chuuya’s bedroom back in Yokohama – and even in Paris – are filled with various bruise ointments, and there’s almost not a single day when he doesn’t smell like a walking drugstore. Ironic, as his occupation is as far as possible from any kind of wounds, at least, not in a direct sense – he studies literary criticism, and he’s in his first year of university. The pain transcends geographical, physical, and mental borders; the pain is boundless. No matter where Chuuya is, he feels it. Constantly. What in the world are you? 

“Let’s pray he’s not some sort of parkour guy. These are nuts,” Paul says one time, making dinner for three in their Amsterdam apartment’s kitchen. “I can’t imagine willingly hurting yourself over and over again just to prove a point.”

But we’re all doing this our entire lives, Chuuya wants to say but doesn’t, smiling bitterly into his coffee cup instead. He’s sitting on the sill, staring outside the window overlooking the canal, the people passing by, either on foot or on their bikes, rushing, careless, happy, unbruised. He wonders how many wounds those who are still alone are hiding under their pants and long sleeves. He wonders when he will be able to stop hiding, at last. Apart from the bruising, another nagging thought has been haunting his mind. What if he won’t love me? But, of course, it’s too soon to think about that, too soon to apply any kind of mental imagery to a person he hasn’t even met yet. 

And still, as he lies in bed before sleep, staring at the ceiling, his scratched hands interlocked on his stomach, he can’t stop wondering about things that are not there. Apart from the occupation, as this is clearly the most interesting aspect of him, what is he like? What color is his hair, his eyes? Is he Japanese, European, or American, maybe? How far is he, physically? Is he younger? Older? What does his face look like when he laughs? With months and years going by, Chuuya’s mild interest is slowly growing into a dry, darkening scab on his heart. He still wants to know – but, at the same time, he doesn’t. What use is there in knowing if life itself keeps postponing their meeting as if testing the limits of Chuuya’s patience? Most people meet their soulmate by the age of eighteen; others, as early as sixteen. Chuuya’s twentieth spring is approaching, and his days are still full of second-guessing: a cold bed where he sleeps, an empty chair in front of him in every restaurant he visits, a persistent feeling of nausea and a desire to grimace at every single happy couple he passes by in the street. He hides his hands in his pockets and frowns at everything and nothing in particular, of course, you are happy, you are happy because nothing hurts, because your suffering has been tamed at last, because you may not worry about sharing your wounds anymore and can only think about protecting the longevity of your love from now on. Fucking parasites. 

It’s mid-March, the water in the canal is still unbearably cold, but as Chuuya walks along it on his way home from a grocery store, suddenly, out of nowhere, he feels a spike of sharp pain in his right ankle, like someone pierced his calf with an arrow. He yelps from surprise and drops the grocery bag on the ground as he trips over his own feet – and, with the greatest misfortune known to humanity, falls right into the canal with a loud splash. 

Later, as he’s sitting on a bench at emergency care, wet-haired, stinky from the dirty greenish water, and trembling all over his body, albeit wrapped in three wool blankets, Rimbaud and Verlaine are rushing around like two moths, stirring fuss and requesting an English-speaking doctor. Then – a cutout from the hospital sequence – the doctor, a Dutch man in his forties, is examining Chuuya’s swollen ankle as he’s lying on the cot. In his eyes, when he looks up, there is nothing but pity, and Chuuya hates being pitied. “A sprain,” he announces definitively and moves to his desk to write something down. “And a very serious one, at that. I doubt you could’ve gotten it by simply walking down the street. The sidewalks are not even slippery.”

Chuuya keeps staring at his ankle intensely, not noticing anything around him, even as Rimbaud and Verlaine are standing over him, imitating each other’s stance – arms folded on their chests, faces full of worry and disapproval. The doctor keeps typing something on his computer and writing things down in a notebook. Chuuya’s pain has long been substituted by fury – cold, unresponsive, he’s just not letting it show, not here. “I wish he'd just kill himself already.”

“Chuuya,” Paul’s disapproving voice right above his head. 

“What?” He snaps back, looking at the two of them. “He keeps injuring himself all the time, not even thinking of how I feel. Didn’t it occur to him that I’m tired?” He shakes his head, reaching to rub the place of sprain gently with his hand, and winces slightly. “If he were a good person, he would be looking for me to say that he’s sorry.”

To this, Rimbaud and Verlaine stay silent, just exchanging ambiguous glances instead. 

By the time they come back to Japan, the idea has been nestling in Chuuya’s head for over a month. He scrapes the money he was gifted for his twentieth birthday by various family friends from his bedroom drawer and looks up the highest-rated fortune teller online. He doesn’t say a word to Paul or Arthur because he knows they won’t approve. By asking someone who – presumably – knows exactly where to look for your soulmate, you breach the order of the universe, which is the sole authority deciding when your meeting should happen. Unfortunately, Chuuya is too impatient to keep waiting for the signs. 

As soon as he arrives at the address, he realises that the pictures on Google Maps must have been outdated, or the contact information is simply wrong. Instead of a posh, upper-class apartment building he sees an old, shabby structure barely holding together; the smell of mould and chalk coming off the walls along with the cracked, old paint, lewd graffiti over the apartment doors, a dead rat on the staircase, he needs to cover his nose with his sleeve as he proceeds upstairs, holding his phone in the other hand in case he needs to call the police. In front of the door, he hesitates for a moment before pressing the ring button – no identification marks in sight. At last, he takes a deep breath – now or never, Nakahara – and rings. Almost instantly, he hears scurrying from behind the door, the sound of slippers being dragged over the bare wooden floor. A woman opens, not too old, younger than thirty, at least; red-haired just like Chuuya, with cat eyeliner and bright red lipstick, she’s holding a lit cigarette in her right hand as she crosses her arms on her chest and leans against the doorframe. She’s wearing a floral-patterned yukata, tied hastily on her thin waist. 

“Kouyou-san?” He makes sure to be polite, greeting her with a slow nod. 

“Flesh and blood,” the woman nods; the backdrop of the apartment behind her – a dimly-lit hallway, abstract paintings on the walls, a strong smell of cigarette smoke and vanilla incense making Chuuya dizzy all at once. He almost regrets coming here, almost decides to turn around and run, and never wonder again. “And you must be Chuuya,” Kouyou squints at him, studying his face and body from head to toe. He shrinks into himself a little under her persistent glare, hugging himself with both arms, suddenly cold. She takes a drag of her cigarette, blows it out into his face; he grimaces but doesn’t turn away. “The shiners are substantial. Mostly on the lower part of your legs, forearms, elbows, and ribs. Your feet are so sore all the time that you can’t remember the last time you could walk without pain. But what you hate the most is the sprains. After that first one in Amsterdam, you had three more, two on your right ankle and one on the left,” her lips to the cigarette filter, again. A long pause. “You hate him and wish he were dead.”

Chuuya feels like he was just punched in the stomach. 

He takes a deep breath. “May I come in?”

They are in the living room (or it’s the session room, he doesn’t care enough to ask), Chuuya is on a shabby and cracked, burgundy-colored leather sofa, watching Kouyou pour both of them some tea. The room is… spectacular; the light is red but dimmed, which makes it look like someone’s blood was splashed over the walls. The sofa in front of him is similar but black, with a comforter thrown casually over its back; an exquisite, patterned rug on the floor; many, too many lamps; exotic plants on the windowsill; a turned-off TV; and paintings, paintings, paintings, so many of them that Chuuya stops keeping count. The bright, yellowish light is coming from the kitchen behind Kouyou’s back, creating a sort of blurred halo behind her head, making her look angelic, divine. It smells strongly of cinnamon. 

“I’ve been baking buns,” Kouyou explains, noticing him breathe in a lungful. “I’ll have to turn off the oven in twenty minutes, if you’ll excuse me. However, something’s telling me we’ll be done much earlier than that,” she picks up her teacup and takes a sip as she leans back on the sofa. “So, what is your question, darling?”

Chuuya keeps tinkering with the hem of his long-sleeved shirt, feeling the fabric under his fingertips; it has always calmed him down. “My first question is,” he takes a deep breath. “What happened to you?”

At first, Kouyou frowns like she doesn’t understand him. Then, she takes a look around the room and flicks her hand in the air. “Ah, this? You would think a lot of people want to find out about their soulmates, and it was true somewhat ten years ago,” she smiles, but there’s nothing joyful in her face. “I used to swim in riches and gold, but people got disappointed in love,” she shrugs – a calm, peaceful acceptance. “No one even comes anymore. You’re my first client in three months.”

“I heard it’s because all you do is lie,” Chuuya squints at her. 

He knows it can infuriate her, but she doesn’t seem angry. She just smiles gently, looking down into her cup for a second, gliding her index finger over the porcelain rim like she’s trying to see something at the bottom. “Do you want to hear a lie?”

Chuuya fists his hands over the fabric of his shirt. Grits his teeth. “I wouldn’t mind a lie, for all I care. As long as I hear at least something that puts my mind at ease and relieves me from the sleepless nights.”

Kouyou hums. “Alright, then. Here’s a lie,” she smacks her lips as she puts her cup aside on the coffee table. Chuuya still hasn’t touched his own. “Your soulmate doesn’t care about you.”

He holds his breath for a moment. “This sounds like the truth to me.”

“In this case, you are very narrow-minded,” she shrugs. “Or foolish.”

“I’m not paying you to insult me.”

“I’m not helping you to hear insults either.”

Chuuya sighs, his shoulders falling. “Okay. I’m sorry?” He shakes his head desperately. “I don’t think you’re a liar. Just tell me… anything? Please? Where is he? How can I find him?”

“He wants to be found,” Kouyou says after a short pause. “He’s desperate for it,” Chuuya starts growing hopeful, his entire essence stirring. “However,” this is when something in his confidence cracks. “He doesn’t know about it yet.”

Chuuya frowns. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“He’s too preoccupied with meeting sky-high expectations of others to even be thinking about looking for his soulmate,” Kouyou sighs. “It’s pretty common with athletes.”

“He’s an athlete?” He’s had his suspicions for a long time now. Someone who gets injured this much and this consistently can be either a gang member or a sportsman, and he’s been wondering which option would be less violent to withstand. 

To this, Kouyou says nothing. She reaches for the glass shelf under the coffee table and takes out a small, pocket-sized notebook and a pen. In very fast, schooled movements, she scribbles something on the page, tears it out, folds it in two, and passes it to Chuuya, a fast and sharp slide of her hand over the table. “Here,” she says, emotionless. “That’s the address. You won’t miss him no matter what time you go, he’s there sixteen hours a day.”

Chuuya takes the note hesitantly and just holds it in his hand for some time, hesitating to look inside. He decides to do it later and pockets it instead. “Thank you.”

“Anything else?” Kouyou asks as she reaches for another cigarette and a lighter on the table. 

He clears his throat. There might be. “Is it… um… guaranteed that we will love each other?”

She scoffs into her cigarette. “I am a fortune teller, child, not a god,” she takes a deep breath, then, and with it – a long pause, her gaze wandering around the room. “But I’d say it’s an axiom. If you were prewritten to be together, it means that you have something valuable to share with each other.”

So far, they’ve been sharing nothing but pain. Of course, Chuuya doesn’t say it out loud. 

By the time he’s back at the door, putting his shoes and jacket on, the note in his jeans’ pocket keeps burning his skin even through all the layers of fabric separating it from his hipbone. When he reaches for the doorknob, ready to leave, Kouyou calls him by name once again. “Paris, Amsterdam, Yokohama, the underworld, who cares, right?” She says dreamily, staring at him with a smile in her eyes; a cigarette is smoldering between her fingers. “At the end, you will always keep coming back to each other.”

Chuuya doesn’t unfold the note until much later, in his room after dinner and shower, lying in his bed, uneasy. For some time, he just crumples the paper in his fingers, scared of what he’s going to see inside. When he finally finds the guts to look, the address doesn’t sound familiar in the slightest, and he has to look it up online. When he sees the place on the Maps app, he holds his breath in surprise, sitting up on the bed, his entire body stirred up. 

A skating rink?

In his very first ice skating class, the coach teaches Dazai how to fall. 

Falling is the first thing you have to learn, unless you don’t want all the rest to go to waste. 

Dazai is five years old, and he’s not afraid of falling, but he doesn’t know it yet.

Injuring himself comes to him as something natural, almost as an instinct of sorts, the sunniest and brightest of his days tainted by the permanent presence of duty, and there are only so many seconds he gets to himself as he grows. When he wakes on the morning of his fifteenth birthday, he already knows it’s going to be harsh. He’s a much better skater now than he was one, two, five, or ten years ago; he almost doesn’t fall, unless he’s extremely exhautsted and malnourished or there’s some emergency with his skates (the last time he remembers, the blades weren’t installed properly, and he ended up falling thrice before figuring out what was wrong). Today, however, is a special day. Just because he celebrates the commencement, it doesn’t mean that the skating practice is called off. He still showers and eats breakfast at six, leaves the house at seven-thirty, and his mom (a widow working three jobs to afford her only son’s skating classes) drives him to the rink by eight. You’ll get a cake for dinner, she promises with a fake smile on her face as she reaches to ruffle his hair and kiss him on the temple before he gets out of the car, the sports bag with his skates on his shoulder.

This life is a tempest. A fall after a fall after a fall after a fall, then – winter. Dazai falls headfirst into the grass in June, pretending that it’s snow. He scrapes the ice with the tip of his nose during his next shameful fall on the rink, spread to all sides like a starfish, and laughs. He didn’t plan to fall today. In fact, he hasn’t fallen for so long that he doesn’t remember how the pain of it feels anymore. He is a good skater. He is professional. He’s won championships, for god’s sake. 

“Good heavens, Osamu, what’s wrong with you today?” Yosano circles around him, hands at her sides, looking down at where he lies on the ice, staring at the high ceiling, completely befuddled, disapprovingly. 

He swallows. “I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know how he fell. But it felt… refreshing. 

He gets up and gets going – over and over and over again, smoothing his moves, and jumps, and turns, only to end up falling three more times, scratching his knee and – it seems like – spraining his ankle. Yosano puts her hand to her face. “I’m calling the doctor in. You’re a mess.”

The devil’s games. On the most important day of his life, the day he’s supposed to start taking care of his body, he suddenly skates like a bull in a china shop, like it’s his first ever time on the ice, as if all these ten years have never happened. 

He doesn’t tell his mother about any of that, because it would upset her. In the evening, sitting at the kitchen table and gnawing at his coveted birthday cake, filled generously with cream and decorated with blueberries, he pushes out a carefree smile when she asks how his training went. “Impressive, as usual.”

After that, he starts falling during almost every single training, sometimes more than once, with a terrifying consistency. Yosano is joking that he’s been possessed by the devil, but with time, her light-hearted attitude vanishes, turning into disapproval and shame. There’s a short period of time when he improves, though not for long, only to fall into the pit of misfortunes again. More and more often, he starts doubting if skating was even the right choice for him, if, perhaps, he should have gone for astronomy instead, as his late dad had always wanted, but then, he gets up, rubs his bruised knees and ankles, and keeps going – again, and again, and again. Every time he fails a jump and lands on his ass (be damned those falling lessons), he avoids Yosano’s judging glare in shame and repeats to himself, silently, like a mantra, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…

“I’m sorry, Dazai,” the life sentence rings in his head at nineteen. “I’m afraid you’re not going to participate in the tournament in Amsterdam with that level of preparation.”

And, although he understands it, he can’t for the life of him accept it. He keeps returning to the rink, even outside his training hours, sometimes staying up late or even until early morning, polishing up his routine over and over again. There’s this one moment, short but painful and brisk, before he braves a jump, when someone’s alien voice in his head dictates: You’re going to fall. And then, he does, he always does, already expecting it from the very start and not ever trying to brace himself for the impact, just accepting it as a form of punishment, almost hitting himself against the ice on purpose, making it hurt more, making it hurt less, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry… 

At home, in the bathroom, as he brings a razor to the stubble on his chin, he freezes for a moment, just studying his own face in the mirror, his red, sleepless eyes, his crow’s nest of a hair, his dry, frostbitten lips, and wonders if anyone is ever going to love a failure like him, if he’s even loveable in the first place. It is even embarrassing to admit: he was so excited to finally meet his soulmate that he accidentally injured him a million times more than he’d ever planned to. 

His hand flinches, and he nicks his neck with the razor by accident, a thin stream of blood oozing down his skin, staining the fabric of his t-shirt. It seems like everything he will do from now on will inevitably hurt them both. “I’m sorry,” he whispers to the empty room as if someone is there, listening. 

After Yosano announces that he’s not going to participate in the tournament he’s been training for for the past three years, he gives up skating for a solid month, refusing to exit his room; he’s scared to even go to the kitchen to eat, and his mom has to bring his meals to his door. He knows he’s acting wrong. He also knows that she’s disappointed in him, but she’s too sweet to let it show. She must be thinking that he just needs time, except no amount of time is going to fix this failure of a human back into place. Dazai decides that the best solution would be to stay inside, not leaving the house, and thus minimising the possibility of an injury. He sleeps all the time, reads books, listens to music, and watches movies that have been gathering dust on his watchlist for the past five years. He hides his skates deep into the corner of his closet, willing not to ever look at them again.

Until one day, Yosano arrives, her wool scarf and her impeccable smile, and shakes him – figuratively – by the shoulders. “Come back to the rink,” she says, moving closer to him on the bed, her begging doe eyes but steel stance, a fireforce of a woman. Dazai looks away, unable to withstand her gaze. “Come back to the rink,” she says again. 

“I won’t.”

“Their suffering is not your responsibility.”

“But what if it is?” He turns to her suddenly, feeling his entire essence boil up to his throat in protest, making it hard to swallow. “What if every bruise I get makes him hate me more? What if he’ll never want to see me because of that?”

Yosano takes a deep breath. “You care about the person you don’t even know more than you care about your future in professional sports,” she says. “I know it’s not over. It can’t be. I remember the way your eyes burned when your mother first brought you to the rink. They are still burning, all this time, they haven’t died out for even a second,” she sighs. “Dazai. Come back to the rink.”

He feels hot tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. It’s true that he wants to skate more than anything else in the world; it’s also the only thing he can do well, if at all. Is he really willing to let it all fall by the wayside for the idea of a person he’s never even seen? The rink has never left him, never betrayed him; the rink is the only place in the world where he feels like he can be himself. At last, he wipes a lonely tear scattering down his face with the back of his palm and braves a look at Yosano’s face, still gentle, still full of hope, despite all of her uncovered rigidity. “Okay.”

After this fateful talk, he comes back to the rink like he’d promised and never thinks of leaving again. If anything, he starts skating with more determination than ever before, still falling but getting up again, persistently, no matter how much the bruises hurt. He does make it to the tournament – not in Amsterdam, but in Paris. The city is gray and windy in late November, most of the streets are bare, and there’s more sky than ever. He takes the silver and comes back home with a silent promise to take the gold next time. He’s written about in the newspapers. His mom tells him she’s proud of him. Yosano keeps her emotionless stance, just nodding with her signature “Let’s get back to work”. He does. Another nasty sprain deprives him of training for two weeks, but he still manages to injure himself at home, multiple times, out of pure clumsiness. He decides that, whoever his soulmate is, this person is extremely unlucky, because Dazai is not going to stop, no matter how much pain it brings him. He wonders what he will tell him the day they finally meet (and it’s been quite a stretch of time), but he still can’t think of anything else except I’m sorry – this time, though, said rather with a playful acceptance than shame. I’m sorry, this is who I am. I’m sorry, I won’t try to change. I’m sorry, you can leave me if you want, I won’t mind. 

Except, when he meets Nakahara Chuuya for the first time, he wants to say completely different things. 

The streak of soul-crushing happiness in his life is so long that Dazai almost starts finding it suspicious. This is when the next blow comes. 

“They reviewed your rehearsal video,” Yosano announces the next time he comes to the rink, about to snap the guards off the blades and start warming up. “They decided to proceed with Tanizaki instead.”

“What?” Dazai freezes abruptly, his hands squeezing the rails behind his back to the point of pain. “I won’t ever believe that Tanizaki skated better than me.”

Yosano draws her hand down her face with a deep sigh. “Of course, he skated better than you. You skated like you shat yourself. I was ashamed to even look at you.”

He finds himself breathing deeply, unevenly, his entire essence concentrating in his solar plexus like a violent punch. He wants to say something in his defence. He wants to spit on the ice and run away. He wants to crash himself against the nearest wall and make sure that his body remembers the pain. He does none of that, because the heavy door behind him flies open with a click, and other skaters training alongside him start seeping in, small-talking about their plans for the day and fixing their clothes and hair as they walk. Yosano keeps staring at him with aplomb, expecting a reaction. He doesn’t give her one, just shaking his head and turning around to leave the rink. Off the ice, he clasps the guards back on and picks up his bag from the floor. When he looks up, someone is standing almost right in front of him, merely three steps away. A guy his age that he’s never seen before, not a skater; red-haired, caramel-eyed, freckled, so spooked he might have as well seen a ghost. 

Dazai doesn’t spare him another second of attention. He notices the stranger open his mouth at him, trying to say something, but he just passes by him as fast as he can, sighing in irritation and rushing to the exit. Probably just another fan desperate for his autograph. 

The day Chuuya is supposed to meet his soulmate at the skating rink, he can’t think of anything else but this. Everything in his head is blurred, thoughts changing one another rapidly, but, at the same time, there’s nothing but an eerie emptiness, what am I going to say? What am I going to do? He doesn’t sleep at night either, turning from side to side and biting his lips. He wishes he could just be cool about it, cool and independent, I don’t need you to like me and all, except he does, he does, he does, because if they – as it’s naggingly promised by all soulmatism psychologists and book-smart bloggers – click at first glance, the pain of waiting will finally come to a halt. Chuuya can’t wait for this moment to happen. 

In the morning, he spends over an hour in the bathroom, trying to make himself look as presentable as possible. He irons all his clothes, styles his hair in a way that makes it lie gracefully over his left shoulder, and brushes his teeth after breakfast and coffee, before leaving the house. To Arthur and Paul, he lies that he’s meeting with a friend from the university – neither of them has to know before he does. He jumps into the car and drives to the location, his hands trembling on the wheel the entire time, the crumpled note with the address on the dashboard. He wonders if he should bring something with him, buy something on the way, so he doesn’t come empty-handed, but what can he possibly give to a person he doesn’t know? Besides, a figure skater? And Chuuya even has no idea what his name is. He should have asked Kouyou at least that. 

At the rink, the woman at the front desk barely spares him a tired glance, but Chuuya still decides to notify her that he’s here to see a friend of his who’s a skater. 

“Sure,” she replies on autopilot, fixing her glasses and typing something quickly on her keyboard. “May I just have your name? I need to document everyone who walks in. Safety measures.”

Chuuya hesitates for a moment but then nods, forcing out a polite smile. “Of course.”

She guides him to the cloakroom, where he takes off his jacket and just stands there for a moment in front of the mirror, figuring out what he’s going to say when he sees him. A simple hello won’t do – after all, there’s much more to say that has been stacked between them over all these years. Then, as he’s fixing his hair and putting on a carefree smile, he decides that he’ll just go with the flow. Besides, he’ll likely lose the course first, especially if the rink is filled with athletes; how will he ever know which one of them he needs?

However, the second he steps into the pavilion, he sees him right away. It’s like all the others have suddenly ceased to exist, and in the room full of people, Chuuya can only look at a tall, scrawny but lean figure, dark curly hair, pale skin, eyes like two moons stranded in space with no planet to orbit. His heart skips a beat. He is beautiful. And mine.

Suddenly, all the bruises, scratches, and sprains collected over these infuriatingly long years don’t mean anything anymore. For him, Chuuya is willing to go through any torture known and unknown, for the sake of a mere look into his eyes. 

And, as if led forward by his unspoken wish, the – still – stranger turns around, stepping off the ice and reaching to fix some sort of small guarding cases over the blades of his skates. He looks unnerved, disoriented, and pissed. When he straightens his back and their eyes meet for a second, Chuuya’s entire world falls on his shoulders. He wants to scream, but he opens his mouth to whisper. “Hello.”

He gets ignored, violently, the tall figure like a ghost passing by him without even sparing him a second look. The door opens and closes with a loud slam behind his back. Other skaters in front of him keep making circles around the rink. The world resumes its movement. And Chuuya just keeps standing there, pierced through the heart, at a loss for words. 

When Dazai leaves the building half an hour later, for the first time in a while, his entire body itches for a cigarette. He starts rummaging around in his bag and pockets, but finds nothing except his wired earphones, tangled to the point of no return, a bunch of konbini receipts, and his transport card, which he uses on the days when his mom can’t pick him up in her car. Today is one of those days. He wonders if she’s just looking for excuses so she doesn’t have to spend those excruciatingly long thirty minutes alone with him in the car, in awkward silence encasing them both like shields or coffins. He wonders if she wants to disown him. He would disown himself if he were his own parent. 

He starts walking forward, intending to find the nearest tobacco kiosk, when someone calls him – not by name – from behind. “Hey!” He doesn’t turn around first, staring at his feet as he walks instead. “Hey, I’m talking to you!”

He freezes, at last, closing his eyes with a sigh for a moment, and lets the stranger catch up with him instead of following his voice. When he looks up, it’s the same boy that he saw earlier next to the rink, staring at him with a silent reproach. “Listen,” Dazai sighs, fixing the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “If you want an autograph or a picture, I’m not really in the best shape right now. Thank you for coming here, though. I appreciate that.”

Instead of saying anything in return, the stranger reaches for the sleeve of his jacket and rolls it up along with his long-sleeved shirt underneath. The movement uncovers a wide, darkening bruise on his forearm, closer to the elbow, resembling a blooming blue iris. He offers his arm to Dazai, practically showing it into his face, impatience and demand. Dazai opens his mouth and closes it again without taking another breath. He looks down at his own arm then, seeing the bruise clearly even through the layers of fabric, knowing that it’s there. The bag falls off his shoulder, forgotten. He finds the stranger’s face, again, suddenly unable to breathe. “You.”

He nods, no sign of previous admiration in his eyes, and rolls his sleeves back down. “Me.”

This is how they meet.

Chuuya starts to come to Dazai’s practice every Tuesday and Saturday, because these are the only days on which he doesn’t stay at the uni until late at night. He always brings snacks, forcing Dazai to eat even when food is the last thing on his mind, and he always cares. Even when he’s visibly tired, exhausted after his classes, barely verbal after a long day, he doesn’t go away; he stays, sitting somewhere at the tribunes, reading a book for his home assignment and glancing up at Dazai from time to time. And every time Dazai trips over his own feet and falls, shamefully, on the ice, stamping another bruise into his leg or forearm, Chuuya winces as if he feels the pain too, but he doesn’t anymore, because the agony is finally over, and still – he keeps sharing Dazai’s wounds as if they are his own, too.

They are not lovers.

They are barely even friends.

They get to know each other better during the long walks they take from the rink to their apartments, talking about everything and nothing at the same time, pondering about the life surrounding them. Dazai starts laughing more often. Sometimes, he comes back home, slamming the entrance door shut, and just stands there for some time, his back pinned against the wooden surface, hugging his bag, pressing it against his chest lovingly, smiling with a dreamy face; he only hears his mom when she calls for him for the fifth time from the kitchen. 

During one of these walks, Dazai dares to reach for Chuuya’s hand, swaying lightly along his body, entirely relaxed. Chuuya flinches at first, tense and unsure like a cornered animal, but then allows Dazai to entwine their fingers. Dazai’s heart breaks and reassembles itself anew. The full moon is shining bright over their heads. They are crossing the park because they didn’t want to pick a shorter route. This is when he braves saying it for the first time. “I’m sorry.”

Chuuya glances at him immediately, puzzled. “What in the world for?”

“For hurting you,” he licks his lips. “For so long.”

“It was never your fault.”

In a world where love is prescribed, everything happens by design. The pain, too. No matter how much they try, they can’t escape the hurt of the truly beautiful things. But, after all, isn’t it a fair price to pay for love? Most of the wounds Chuuya got from him have long worn off without a trace, but others left scars, and Dazai’s gaze sometimes stumbles upon them whenever Chuuya wears a sleeveless t-shirt or shorts, and then, his head fills with constant apologies he forces himself not to voice out. It was never his fault. He learns to live with it.

He realizes that he loves Chuuya – truly, unconditionally – when he first sees him asleep on the tribunes, deep into the night, after Dazai had begged him repeatedly not to stay, that it was fine, that just because he needed to train more before a tournament didn’t mean Chuuya had to wait for him all that time. When he wakes him up with a gentle push against his shoulder, Chuuya stirs and sits up, rubbing his eyes sleepily; then, his gaze falls upon Dazai’s disapproving face. 

“You know,” he says before Dazai can start lecturing him. “I went to a fortune teller once. About you.”

Dazai feels a little tickle in his stomach. Pleasant, warm. “And what did she say?”

Chuuya clears his throat, suddenly very lucid, and straightens his shoulders, copying the fortune-teller's deep, serious, custodial voice. “Paris, Amsterdam, Yokohama, the underworld, who cares? At the end, you will always keep coming back to each other.” Noticing Dazai’s befuddled glare, he just shrugs, almost entirely unaffected. “I mean, what’s the point in leaving you if I’m going to return anyway?”

They spend Chuuya’s twenty-first birthday on a picnic outside; the day is warm, albeit windy, and they are sitting on a blanket spread over the grass, drinking fresh lemonade and observing the city from a hill. They can even see the seashore, lurking far away, they can almost smell the salt in the air. Later, Dazai gets stung by a bee, and while it’s annoying, it’s not painful. As he’s working over the small poke on his forearm, using an ointment from the first-aid kit they found in Chuuya’s car, he notices Chuuya staring at the same spot on his own arm, as if expecting the sting to appear there; his face calm but concerned. Even when Dazai is done putting a bandaid over the sting and almost forgetting about its existence entirely, Chuuya keeps watching his own skin with an eerie concentration, not looking away, not even blinking. 

Dazai’s stomach sinks. He still expects the pain, after everything they’ve had. “Hey,” he calls him, not by name, just like Chuuya did when they first met. “Look at me.”

When he does, Dazai braves something he’s been thinking about for the past week, if not a month, if not an eternity. He moves closer to him on the blanket and puts one hand on the side of Chuuya’s face, forcing him not to look away. He doesn’t try to – he only swallows nervously, opening his mouth as if to say something but staying silent at last. It takes Dazai only a fraction of a second to lean forward, without thinking, and kiss him on the lips. He knows this is the only right thing to do because of the way his heart starts flickering like a hologram all over his body, thousands of fireworks around when he closes his eyes, so this is how it’s supposed to feel. Chuuya returns the kiss, slowly but eagerly, putting his hands on the nape of Dazai’s neck, not letting him lean back. They kiss for the longest time as the last of the puzzle pieces are finally falling into place. When they part, both out of breath, Dazai exhales with a smile. 

“I think I’ll take the gold next time.”

Chuuya needs a second to realise what he’s talking about. 

“I know you’ll take the gold,” he nods, at last. 

“And I won’t ever fall again,” Dazai adds. 

If falling means that every time he injures himself, Chuuya will instinctively search for the place of impact on his own body, then Dazai will do everything to prevent any further pain. It’s his duty now. His purpose. 

“By the way,” Chuuya says as he kicks back, stretching his legs in front of him and staring dreamily at the city. “Remember that one time you got a huge bruise on your ass out of nowhere?”

He does. He woke up from a sudden spike of sharp pain on the side of his right hip; later, in the bathroom, he saw a huge, darkening violet spot spreading over his skin. He didn’t remember falling on the ice that day. “It was you?”

Chuuya nods, keeping himself from laughing and failing. “I fell from a horse.”

“You have a horse?”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Chuuya shrugs, shooting him a glance. “Guess we’re even now.”

Dazai smiles and only nods in return, still feeling the sweet aftertaste of their first kiss on his lips. “I guess we are.”

But the truth is, he will never be able to atone for all the pain he made Chuuya go through.

The truth is, this is the very essence of love. 

It never asks for atonement.