Chapter Text
Chapter 1
God exists in this world.
God is merciful, gentle, and omnipotent.
God loves the world and loves all people.
Under the protection of God, people live out each day in happiness and joy.
Day after day, God bestows blessings upon this beautiful world.
*
The curtains were tightly drawn inside the dark, cramped rental apartment, leaving a glowing computer screen as the room's sole source of light.
[Please enter your ID]
[Entry successful. Data verification in progress...]
[Verification successful. Please turn on your camera.]
[Face capture successful. Please turn on your microphone and read the following sentence clearly and with proper pronunciation: Kami-sama, please protect my tiny happiness.]
" Kami-sama, please protect my tiny happiness."
[Speech recognition successful. Results loading...]
[Congratulations! Your compatibility score with kami-sama is 99, surpassing 99.99% of test takers!]
[Please share your troubles and wishes with God!]
[Enter: First, please let me die painlessly.]
[Entry: Secondly, please help me solve the problem of the house being haunted.]
Life is beautiful and you should cherish it! If you have any worries, try calling our hotline 045-04295158 to chat with me!
He hadn't managed to die, and whether the ghost had been dealt with remained unknown. Instead, he had successfully triggered the suicide intervention keywords, causing a string of highly formulaic, advisory text to pop up. Its level of perfunctoriness ranked among the absolute highest in the vast number of suicide intervention pages he had ever seen.
Letting out a faint sigh, Dazai Osamu closed this garbage online wishing wells. He switched over to open LINE and tapped into a small group chat containing only three people to send a message.
No Longer Human: My new rental apartment is haunted
Ango: ?
Odasaku: Ah?
No Longer Human: Can Ango perform exorcisms?
Ango: How could I possibly know how to do something like that
Odasaku: Did something happen?
No Longer Human: It's exactly what I said, haunted!
Ango: What are the specifics? Sleep paralysis? Or are there strange noises or something?
No Longer Human: For example, every time I commit suicide, it inexplicably fails
Ango: ……
Odasaku: So the reason Dazai can't die is because of a ghost? That really is a kind-hearted ghost
Ango: No, Mr. Odasaku, this is the exact moment where you're supposed to call him out. Don't go believing this kind of ghost story!
Odasaku: But that's what Dazai said
Ango: It's precisely because Dazai said it that it's exceptionally ridiculous, isn't it?!
No Longer Human: Ango is so cruel, even refusing to believe me
Ango: Believing this kind of thing would be the truly cruel part! Stop blaming a ghost for your extremely stubborn will to live!
Indeed, Dazai’s vitality had always been different from that of ordinary people. Although he had tried all kinds of suicide methods, he would always survive smoothly in the end due to various reasons, leaving not many paths to death for him. Especially since he also hated pain, which cut off a huge amount of suicide methods, so now he worries every day about how on earth he should die.
Under such a premise, things have recently gone from bad to worse. Although he couldn't die before and can't die now, recently it is different; Dazai can clearly feel that something is obstructing him.
For example, clearly having shut the doors and windows tightly before committing suicide by burning charcoal, but waking up from a sleep to find the windows wide open, the fire in the brazier long since extinguished, and the charcoal inside not even finished burning—let alone dying, instead, having slept a whole night, it actually faded his dark circles under his eyes a little.
For example, he had clearly hung up the rope and was preparing to hang himself, but shortly after kicking away the stool he was using as a stepping stone, the rope broke under the weight, causing him to fall and suffer from pain in one side of his buttock for several days.
For example, even when attempting to use substances to achieve his goal, his body would react unexpectedly, rejecting the attempt before it could take effect. It felt as though his own physical form or the environment itself was conspiring against his wishes, rendering his efforts futile.
For example, he had had a whole bottle of sleeping pills, but before starting to feel sleepy, he suddenly had stomach cramps. He then rushed to the bathroom and vomited into the toilet. Wasting all the money on the pills, as they’ve all gone to the toilet.
Cases of this sort are too numerous to mention. Although Dazai belongs to the atheist faction, he is now starting to suspect the presence of an unseen force.
—How could there be such an annoying presence? Generally speaking, according to common tropes, shouldn't supernatural entities be the cause of one's demise rather than its primary obstacle?
Sighing unhappily, Dazai pushed against the desk, causing the swivel chair beneath him to spin half a turn to face the room. He looked around the cramped, damp rented apartment, as if trying to discover something hidden in those dark corners.
“I say, Mr. or Miss Unknown Ghost,” he spoke to the empty room for the fourteenth time, as if attempting to communicate with some invisible entity, “could you please stop interfering with my suicide attempts? If you truly cannot suppress your urge to be helpful, I suggest you help kill me instead. The kind that won't cause me any pain.”
Naturally, no one answered him, and no abnormalities occurred. Whether it was a sudden gust of chilly wind, a pale ghostly face pressing up against his eyes, or blood flowing from the faucet, absolutely nothing of the sort happened. The room was perfectly quiet, just a completely ordinary, old, rented apartment.
This made Dazai, who was attempting to talk to an empty room, look like a mental patient.
Or rather, he already looked quite like one to begin with. After all, generally speaking, no young person in the prime of their youth would be like him: at twenty years old, neither studying nor working, just staying every day in a tiny, dilapidated room, with bandages wrapped all over his body, even his right eye covered by bandages, leaving it impossible to tell whether he was blind or not.
Even this room Dazai lived in had been complained about countless times by Sakaguchi Ango, who wondered how on earth he had found such a hazardous building. It was so broken down it felt like it could collapse at any moment. The hallways were covered in black spots and mold, several of the lights were broken, so going up and down the stairs required using a flashlight, and the rented room was pitifully crude, just a single room of about twenty square meters plus a restroom, with barely any furniture inside.
To be honest, it truly looked exactly like a place that would be haunted; it felt like it wouldn't be surprising no matter how many people had died here.
This was the kind of place where, if an ordinary person walked past downstairs and looked up, they would feel from the bottom of their heart that whoever lived there must be an impoverished loser derailed from society, the type living hand-to-mouth in a complete daze.
However, Dazai Osamu was not this kind of underdog. He had a capitalist foster father who owned a company, and he himself had once attended the nuclear physics department of a certain Ivy League institution, only to drop out and return to Japan after just three months. His reason was that it was too boring; he disliked squeezing into a room with a crowd of people for two or three hours for content he could understand in just over ten minutes, and the professors were so bald that looking at them ruined his mood.
But to say he was derailed from society was indeed accurate. After all, he lived in this kind of place and basically rarely went out. It could be said he actively derailed himself from society, spending every day drinking alcohol, eating canned food, and researching how to commit suicide. His greatest wish was to bid an early farewell to this boring world with a difficulty level of zero. This rented apartment was chosen by himself, having just moved here two months ago. Everyone he knew had an entirely indescribable look on their face after coming to visit, yet he alone had a very satisfied appearance. No one could figure out what on earth he was satisfied with about this broken place.
Everyone who knew Dazai admitted that Dazai is a genius, and also an eccentric. No one could understand his thoughts, no one could see through his heart, no one wanted him to truly die, yet no one had a reason to persuade him to live on. Who could understand the world through a genius's eyes? The countless deep chasms of predicaments in the world might just be elementary school arithmetic problems that Dazai could solve with a casual wave of his hand. Perhaps to him, every single day of being alive was like continuously calculating addition and subtraction within ten, and the visibly foreseeable future would still remain this way; this was indeed a form of torture.
When Dazai was fifteen years old, Mori Ogai tried to have a chat with his foster son, Dazai asked him a question in return, asking if he truly felt there was any value inherent in the act of being alive itself? At that time, Mori failed to answer. This elder remained silent for a moment, and then only said: "Dazai-kun, don't be in such a rush to seek death, go out and walk around. The answer I cannot give you, perhaps someone in the future will be able to give you, perhaps you will be able to find it yourself in the future, perhaps God will answer you in the future."
At that time, when Mori said these words, he looked very mysterious, very profound, and very full of confidence. Although the relatively "young and ignorant" Dazai back then did not fully believe it, he more or less felt like there might be a tiny bit of sense to it, so why not believe him this once and give it a try? Thinking back on it now, back then Mr. Mori was completely fishing with a straight hook, and he actually took the bait; it was truly a lifelong humiliation.
Now five years have already passed, and still no one can answer this question for him. Though, nowadays he doesn't truly think he can get any answer anyway, otherwise he wouldn't be staying in his room every day to grow mold. One can only say that Mr. Mori is truly a dog, truly using empty hands to catch a white wolf and forcefully painting a pie for him, causing him to roll up his sleeves and work in vain for several years, meeting quite a few people, before completely confirming that this old pervert Mr. Mori is truly suited to be a capitalist, fully deserving the title of the Yokohama's King of Future-Faking.
Dazai Osamu did not like this world, nor did he like life, because everything was just too boring. There were no unexpected matters, no interests capable of fascinating him, and no things in existence worth striving for. Every single day, day after day, it was merely continuously writing down the answer to "1+1=2" on paper.
It would be more practical for him to earnestly and steadily focus on committing suicide.
To return to the previous topic, the problem of the haunted room had to be solved first.
This ghost, whose shape or form remained completely unknown, was a bit difficult to deal with, never giving any response no matter what Dazai said, being so quiet it was as if there were no ghost in the house at all.
Or rather, anyone else who was normal would have believed that there was indeed no ghost in the house.
But Dazai Osamu was not a normal person; if he felt there was a ghost, then there definitely was one, and if it couldn't be found, it was just because this ghost had a guilty conscience and didn't dare to come out.
Not only that, but if he wanted to find the ghost, then he absolutely had to find it, with success being the one and only possibility.
Given facts: the ghost was unwilling to talk, and it liked to interfere with his suicide attempts.
Dazai’s eyes darted around, looking toward the only window in the room.
This was the fourth floor, and with his vitality, it would be a bit difficult to plunge to his death, but if he adjusted his posture and landed headfirst, it should be about enough.
He stood up, turned on the light in the room, then came to the window, opened it, and crawled right out without a single moment of hesitation.
At the exact instant his body began to fall, a hand grabbed his collar and yanked him up all at once.
Like a cat being scooped back into a cage, he was stuffed back through that not-at-all spacious window frame.
Suicide had failed yet again, but this time Dazai revealed a bizarre smile that looked spine-chilling, carrying a sense of satisfaction from finally catching his prey.
The black-haired youth reached back and grabbed that temperature-less wrist, saying with a smile, "Caught you, Miss Ghost."
He had only just been pulled back and hadn't had time to turn around and look yet; he just felt that the wrist bone gripped in his palm was a bit thin, seemingly having a very small frame, so it should be a female ghost.
However, in the very next second, he was kicked flat onto the ground, and then he heard a deep, magnetic voice curse out with absolute rage: "You're the fucking 'miss' here, you dumbass!"
——Ah, it's a man, and he also has a bad temper and violent tendencies.
Lying on the ground, Osamu looked up. He froze slightly upon seeing Mr. Ghost’s true appearance, blinking his eyes. He felt that while it was a pity the ghost wasn't a beautiful woman, this petite male ghost looked rather hot.
He saw the ghost standing to the side with one hand on his hip. The legs, wrapped in suit pants, looked very slender. The upper body featured a wine-red shirt, black gloves, a crossed necktie, a choker, and long orange hair. He wore a fedora, and his face was very beautiful, though his expression was rather unpleasant.
Although his face looked very youthful, every move Mr. Ghost made carried a powerful aura. His vibe was mature and chilling. To be honest, he was so full of life that he didn't seem like a ghost at all.
With this entire outfit paired with this height and this face, he didn't look like a straight man no matter how you sliced it. Those hands were not suited for wrapping around some girl, but that waist, on the other hand, was perfectly suited for being held by someone's single arm.
As it turned out, there are no absolute sexual orientations in this world, only objects of affection that aren't stimulating enough.
——Ah, how annoying. He's just a shorty, so what right does he have to look this handsome? How frustrating.
Right now, Osamu’s mood was simultaneously in two states: extremely good and extremely bad. The good mood was because he thought this ghost was a bit interesting and a bit good-looking; the bad mood was also because he thought this ghost was a bit interesting and a bit good-looking.
Just the thought of feeling cheerful because of this kind of meddlesome, brainless, annoying ghost made him incredibly frustrated.
The person who had just been saved remained lying on the ground. The moment he opened his mouth, he bit the hand that fed him: "You're really annoying. Why did you have to disturb my suicide?"
The ghost gentleman glanced at him, then quickly averted his eyes and sneered, "Because seeing you frustrated makes me happy."
"Sigh, how unfortunate. My rented apartment is haunted, and the ghost happens to be the exact type I hate the most. This is truly awful."
Though he was complaining half-deadly with his mouth, Dazai's gaze never once drifted away from the ghost gentleman. He kept staring at that face, which looked like a high schooler's, or to be more precise, staring at those eyes.
Every single part of the ghost gentleman's body was perfectly tailored to his tastes, except for those eyes. He hated those eyes, hated them passionately, hated them for no reason at all.
Those grayish-white, lifeless eyes.
At first glance, it made people feel as though those eyes only had the whites without any iris or pupil, just like how a ghost in a horror movie ought to look. But looking closely, one would realize it wasn't like that. It wasn't that those eyes only had the whites left; it was just that the part in the center, which was supposed to have color, was gray, which made them appear so bizarre.
"Why didn't you come out the previous times I called you? Does being short mean you can act like an impolite child?"
The ghost gentleman still didn't look at him, answering impatiently, "Because you're too ugly, and I don't want to talk to fuglies."
Dazai Osamu: ?
This was truly unacceptable. He scrambled up from the ground instantly, approached with a fake smile, and suddenly thrust his own face right in front of the short ghost's eyes, their noses nearly touching. "Ha? You really must have cataracts and terrible eyesight, huh? Do me a favor and look closer, alright? My face is a hundred times more handsome than a brainless slug like you."
Since he suddenly got so close, the ghost gentleman reacted as if he'd seen a ghost himself, taking a sharp step back like a victim getting forcefully kissed by a creep on a dark street. "Holy shit, don't fucking jump at me all of a sudden, your ugliness is about to make me puke."
Dazai's face went completely dark. Relentlessly pressing forward again, as if he absolutely had to force this annoying ghost to admit he was a total heartthrob today, he chased Mr. Ghost all over the room while the ghost cursed up a storm. For a moment, it was hard to tell which of the two was the actual ghost.
"Are you insane!" Mr. Ghost cursed loudly while dodging. "Get away from me, do you want me to beat you up?!"
"I'm kindly helping you correct your sense of aesthetics! Please don't slander my face, alright?"
"Who asked you to correct it? You look like a rotten, dead fish. It's annoying just looking at you!"
"Have you ever seen a dead fish this handsome?!"
"You idiot, you look more like a dead fish than a dead fish ever could?!"
This ghost is seriously so annoying—Dazai thought to himself—he is the exact type I hate the most, there couldn't possibly be a more annoying existence in the world than him.