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It was the seventh anniversary of Odasaku’s death when Dazai dragged Atsushi to the graveyard with him.
Atsushi had a particular sense for both showing up when Dazai got to feeling Terrible, and for knowing when to leave him the hell alone. He’d always been good at it—with the abused child’s knack for feeling out when people were angry near or with him—but he’d perfected the skill over the time they’d known each other. So he’d been to the cemetery to find Dazai multiple times, but only rarely on a day when Dazai really, truly, desperately did not want company.
But for the most part, his presence was a balm. It was, somehow, much harder to wallow or linger on the world being shit when Atsushi was there. What a guy! What Dazai had done to deserve this, he had no clue.
Atsushi had never appeared at the cemetery on the anniversary, though. His sense of timing was perfect in this case. He’d let Dazai disappear for the day without interruption, but always show up at his door with food within 48 hours. Wouldn’t push, wouldn’t pry. Just…didn’t let him be alone. Made sure he ate and moved and brushed his teeth and then, once he deemed the danger had passed, bullied him into returning to work. Terrible! In the sense that he was both very mean to him and also awe-inspiring in a slightly scary way.
So he knew Atsushi understood the significance of the date when Dazai had asked him to accompany him for his visit.
Right up through actually knocking on Atsushi’s door and saying the words, Dazai hadn’t known if he was making a massive mistake with this or not. Best case scenario he was making Atsushi sit in hardcore miserable silence with him for a few hours; the worst case was he lashed out and said something horrible even though he’d been the one to invite Atsushi in the first place. Or, well, maybe worst case would be something like the apocalypse happening and they had to fight a zombie Odasaku, but surely the universe was done screwing him over like that where his dead best friend was involved.
(Although, Dazai had always imagined a zombie apocalypse would be a great place to pick up a partner for a double suicide…No, no, off topic.)
He’d been unsure, even as Atsushi blinked and responded with of course I’ll come. Then Atsushi’s eyes widened and he’d asked, “Wait, should I bring something for him? Like an offering or food or, um, flowers, I guess?”
“No, you’re fine,” Dazai had told him. Despite himself, he could feel the corners of his mouth twitching. He’d watched Atsushi fuss over packing some food anyway, like he was a Nervous Date About To Go Meet The Parents For The First Time rather than accompany his eccentric mentor to visit a grave. No, this wasn’t a mistake. It would be fine. Maybe even a little better than fine? Good would be too much to ask for, but already Atsushi was acting like his personal warding charm against the overwhelming sadness. Once Atsushi had his bundle of scrounged up snacks they set out.
They walked a meandering route, led by Dazai, who could never bring himself to just go to the cemetery and had to trick himself into ending up there. Atsushi didn’t question him about it, but he did ask about Odasaku.
“Did Oda-san like shortbread?” He was fretting over his grave offering again, sifting through his packed bag.
Dazai shrugged. “He liked whiskey. Curry. Not much of a sweet tooth as far as I know.” When Atsushi frowned he added, “Shortbread’s not too sweet, I’m sure.”
“And you’re sure we shouldn’t stop for something nicer? Flowers?”
“Don’t need to.”
Atsushi hummed doubtfully but stopped rummaging. After a moment he asked, tentative, “What else did he like?”
Dazai told him.
He was near-babbling as they walked. It was a bit more manic-sounding than his usual chatter but it wasn’t forced, and it was all true. He told Atsushi all manner of little details about Odasaku. It was easier to get it out now than at the grave, he was certain. It just felt different to actually talk about him, on today of all days, and not feel like he was dying. In fact, with Atsushi staring up at him and drinking in all the information Dazai was sharing, it just felt a little unreal.
Maybe—maybe this was what someone might call “healing.”
Ugh. That thought made him want to claw open a vein. He shoved it down to pick over when Atsushi wasn’t with him.
His indirect path to their destination made the walk take three times longer than it should have, but they did eventually wind up at the gate. Atsushi took the lead from there, knowing where the grave was. Dazai trailed helplessly behind him.
They sat in front of Odasaku’s stone rather than Dazai’s usual place hiding behind it. Atsushi set down a small napkin and stacked some of the shortbread cookies on it. Then he clapped his hands together and bowed his head. After a minute he peeked at Dazai.
“I’m…not used to visiting graves?” he said, with the slight intonation of a question at the end. Am I doing it right?
“Not a bad problem to have,” Dazai said. Atsushi blushed. “It’s fine. You’re doing fine.”
Atsushi nodded and looked away, mercifully letting the silence go unbroken so Dazai could sit and love-hate-enjoy-despair over being as close to Odasaku as he would ever be again.
…It really wasn’t as bad as usual, with Atsushi there.
Atsushi sat through a solid hour and a half of silence without complaint or fidgeting. As Dazai realized he just wasn’t feeling the full mental breakdown today, he let himself sigh and scoot closer to Atsushi and start poking at him. “We’ll have to leave soon,” he said. “Not now, but soon.”
When Atsushi darted a glance at his face and saw Dazai’s wan attempt at a smile he visibly relaxed and started messing with the sleeve of remaining cookies. He offered some to Dazai, who took one but refused a second. He felt a bit like a pacified toddler as he started munching on it. Rather than continuing to stare at the grave until the carved name was also carved into the dark space behind his eyelids, he decided to stare at his companion.
Atsushi had maintained his air of Unassuming Polite Boy Visiting A Date’s House For The First Time for the entire trip but he’d now developed that furrow between his eyebrows that indicated he was thinking deeply about something. When prompted in the past, Dazai had found this could be anything from remembering odd bits of poetry he’d read to contemplating whether he could get away with eating the pigeons that sometimes landed on the agency windowsill.
They’re taunting me, he’d said. Flaunting it.
Whatever it was, it usually cheered Dazai right up so he, of course, decided to go fully into Annoyance Mode and proceeded to start needling him about it.
“What are you thinking about?” He listed to the side so he could lean the majority of his weight on the arm he snaked around Atsushi’s shoulders. Atsushi jumped a little bit (Unassuming Polite Boy Visiting A Date’s House and Getting Nervous About PDA In Front Of Their Parents, Or Their Dead Friend’s Grave, As The Case May Be).
“Nothing, nothing,” Atsushi tried to demur. Then he grimaced, knowing that was the exact kind of answer that would make Dazai latch on and not let go until he got more information.
Dazai summoned up as much energy as he could. “C’monnnnn,” he whined. “I think it’s against the rules to not answer me when we’re here, by the way.” He sent a mental thank-you up to heaven for being able to use Oda’s gravesite as leverage to get what he wanted. You’re the best, Odasaku!
“No, it’s just a question that I had but it doesn’t really need an answer. And I don’t think I can say it without it sounding rude or mean and I don’t want you to get mad at me and it wasn’t even important. So. Didn’t you say we needed to leave soon, anyway?”
Sure. But he was too intrigued by what Atsushi’s concept of a “mean” question might be to abandon this now.
“If you don’t tell me I’ll cry,” he said, demonstrating his widest and most-sparkliest pleading eyes. A weaker showing than usual but enough to be annoying. “Right here in front of his grave. Are you going to make me cry in front of his grave, Atsushi-kun?”
True to form, Atsushi started to fluster and wave his hands around, which meant Dazai almost had him. He dropped the faux pout. Went in for the kill.
Some visits here Dazai felt nothing, then felt like he should feel bad about feeling nothing, and then went out drinking and made himself feel bad on purpose. Sometimes the scribbly-pulsing-dark blob of feeling in his chest pressed against the back of his eyes and in his throat like he might cry and scream, although he never did. Visiting with Atsushi made this a more-feeling visit rather than less-feeling, so he allowed the unnamed and unfelt emotions to bubble up just enough that his eyes started watering. It wasn’t the most fun way to fake tears, but Atsushi could always tell when he was really really faking it.
Stricken, Atsushi blurted out, “I was just wondering, was he a good writer?”
Dazai blinked, once twice three times, enough to get rid of the thin sheen of water but not enough to make the question make sense in his brain.
Atsushi continued to dig himself deeper, and the expression on his face said he was fully aware of the fact but unable to stop when Dazai didn’t say anything. “You’ve told me he liked to read a lot, and that he wanted to write, but, um. I like to read a lot but I’m not a great writer, I don’t think. It’s not…necessarily…the—the same skillset?” His eyes were desperate, begging Dazai to throw him a line, which he did not do. “Did you ever read anything he wrote, like a short story or a poem or something…?” He finally trailed off. His face was scarlet and he made a little distressed whining noise before turning back to Oda’s grave and bowing his head to it several times in short and apologetic succession.
Which left Dazai to the question. Had Odasaku been a good writer?
Dazai…hadn’t really thought about it.
He knew Oda loved to read, and that he had a book he loved the most. He’d wanted to write—somewhere with a view—and he’d had stories to tell, surely. Dazai could picture so clearly what he thought Odasaku’s voice would sound like in written form. It would be soft and harsh in turn but always clear, poetic but frank, with subtle humor but not shying away from harsh realities.
Odasaku had been so many interesting things to Dazai. A mafioso who didn’t kill, a writer who didn’t write. But that identity, as a writer, had been so ingrained in his mind that it hadn’t occurred to him until Atsushi asked that, well. No. He’d never read any of Oda’s writing.
And now he desperately wished he could say that he had.
Atsushi turned to look at him again and immediately blurted out, “Shit,” before reaching his hands up to Dazai’s face. His fingers came away wet, which Dazai ignored because he had no idea what that was about.
“Don’t look at me,” Dazai demanded. Well, he’d meant it to be a command but it came out as more of a plea. Atsushi looked back to the grave with a miserable expression but was not dissuaded by Dazai’s rigid form from inching even closer until they were sitting pressed solidly together, side-to-side. The extra support was nice so he allowed it without comment.
Dazai had always thought in words. He was firmly an internal monologue kind of guy; no picture books here. People talked about visual imagery and he wasn’t sure what they meant. If someone asked him to picture an apple, sure, he could do that, but if he was just thinking about apples then they weren’t red or green or in a bowl or on a tree or simply alone like a stock image—it was just, APPLE. This was the only reason thinking about Oda was bearable, sometimes: he existed as words, and when Dazai thought about him he didn’t have to picture him bleeding out becoming dead weight as his hand fell and his eyes dulled—
Except now his brain cobbled together the images he had. Odasaku, sitting. A cluttered desk. An ocean view. And pages upon pages, pen scrawling away, but no words. No words. Nothing he could read, because it had never happened and now he could only imagine it and it wasn’t fair. And still he was expected to continue to live on in this world where Oda didn’t exist anymore, where his writing had never existed at all—
“Sorry,” Atsushi whispered. “I know, it’s not fair.”
Had he…said any of that out loud? No, he couldn’t have, because he was biting into his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood.
Atsushi would know, though. About unfairness.
Dazai licked away the blood and let out a shuddering sigh. Defeated, he let his head tilt to come to a rest on top of Atsushi’s. His hair was soft. At least Dazai had that going for him right now.
He couldn’t bring himself to get up, though. He was tired. He ached like he’d been running for a long time and he was certain if it weren’t for Atsushi’s warmth against his side he’d be shivering even though the weather was mild. The idea of trying to stand and walk away when Odasaku’s stone and Atsushi’s shoulder were the only things keeping him from collapsing was incomprehensible.
So unfortunately they were still sitting there when Ango showed up at 2pm on the dot.
Dazai heard him walking up behind them, followed by the pointed cough. Atsushi jolted, but he didn’t move when Dazai didn’t move. Ango sighed and sat down on Atsushi’s other side, albeit at a much more respectable distance. With all three of them facing forward he at least didn’t have to make eye contact with the man.
Ango didn’t say anything as he took out a glass—two glasses—three glasses?—and placed one on the grave. He produced a flask from under his coat and poured a healthy shot of amber liquid into Oda’s glass. The other two remained unfilled, sitting in the grass at his knee.
“I wasn’t expecting you to still be here,” Ango said after a moment. Dazai just hummed. Ango didn’t say anything else. They all stared at the grave.
The awkward silence was broken after a few minutes when Atsushi asked, “Wait, is this why we were supposed to leave? Do you two have shifts? You never come here at the same time?”
This shouldn’t have been such a surprise to Atsushi, in Dazai’s opinion. Atsushi had intuited that there was some kind of bad blood between him and Ango a few months ago and had asked Dazai if he should also be giving him the cold shoulder. The idea of Atsushi suddenly having beef with Ango for no other reason than solidarity with Dazai had amused him so much that he’d considered saying yes. But ultimately Ango was too valuable of a resource, so Dazai’d told him he was fine. From the way Atsushi was getting a little bristly under him, he maybe had picked up a tiny bit of an unfounded grudge anyway.
Dazai snorted, a bit more wetly than usual, which made Ango whip to face him.
“Have you been crying?” he asked, dumbfounded.
Dazai diverted. “Hey, Ango, was Odasaku a good writer?” He managed to get the words out without choking, which was a win.
Even without looking he could tell that the question left Ango stumped.
“I…never read anything by him,” Ango admitted.
“Oh, so it wasn’t just me,” Dazai chirped. He was determined to stop sounding like he’d been ‘crying’ or whatever.
“I don’t know that he ever got around to doing any,” Ango continued, musing. The thought didn’t help Dazai’s determination to not be noticeably miserable. Dazai still wasn’t making eye contact, but he could tell Ango glanced at him before he hurried to continue, “I think he would have been good, though. He had a unique way of looking at the world. I’m sure it would have translated well to his writing.”
“How so?” Dazai pushed. He wanted to know if Ango’s perception of Oda’s potential writing voice was the same as his.
But Ango shook his head and sighed the way he did when he’d decided the question was too personal and he didn’t want to answer. Between the two of them, Dazai and Odasaku had managed to tease real answers out of Ango before—but, well. Couldn’t do that now.
Ango did offer one smidgen of an opinion: “He’d be funny. I used to forget he was funny until he got to the end of a story and said something that was completely off the wall. You never knew he was making a joke until the end, when it took you by surprise.”
Dazai latched onto the words, storing them safely away in his brain because yes, exactly, that was something he remembered about Odasaku, too.
“He once told me I had a December face,” he offered in return.
Ango huffed out a laugh that was mostly a sigh. “He did have a way with words, when he bothered to use them.” He shook his head. “I think he preferred listening to you, though.”
Dazai was—
No use pretending. Dazai was leaking tears into Atsushi’s hair. He tapped on Atsushi’s knee for attention so he wouldn’t have to move from his position, so Atsushi wouldn’t see.
“Yes,” he finally answered. “He was good.”
“Okay,” Atsushi said, tone serious and taking Dazai’s answer with all the gravity it deserved. Dazai could practically feel it radiating from him.
Ha, Odasaku would have loved him.
“No need to worry, Atsushi-kun,” Dazai tried to rouse himself into a joke. “You’re a Polite Boy and you’ve won their approval.”
Atsushi didn’t get it, of course, but Dazai got the feeling that Ango did. Hm.
Although he didn’t understand the comment, Atsushi took the slightly-forced levity as a sign he could ask another question. “What about you, Dazai-san? If you were going to write a book, what would it be about?”
Dazai rattled off immediately, “Three men walk into a bar—”
Ango cleared his throat around a suppressed laugh. Dazai almost smiled.
They ended up eating shortbread cookies and drinking whiskey in front of Odasaku’s grave for the rest of the afternoon. Ango had only brought the three glasses, so Dazai let Atsushi take little sips out of his and enjoyed the way he made a face each time. Occasionally Atsushi would come up with a question, and Ango and Dazai would remember and share as much as they could bear about the small bits and pieces that had made Oda Sakunosuke into something bigger than memory.
They didn’t run out of things to say, but Dazai felt drained by the time Atsushi started murmuring about cleaning up and gently prodded him through getting ready to go.
Both Ango and Atsushi waited for him at the gate as he offered his goodbyes to Odasaku. When he looked to them it was like his past and his present were looking back, and maybe, somehow, impossibly—a future there with them.
The thought lingered in his mind as he listened to the sound of the wind blowing across the swept stones and rattling through the leaves of the tree overhead.