Chapter Text
The wind at the top of the Port Mafia headquarters is always freezing, but as the ground rushes up to meet him, the air turns into something violent. It tears at the black coat, the heavy, suffocating burden of the Boss and rips the bandages from his face.
For four years, the world was a chessboard. Every breath calculated, every tragedy orchestrated.
But right now? There is nothing more to do than close his eyes and fall.
‘So this is what it feels like.’
It’s surprisingly loud. He had always thought dying would be a quiet affair, a gentle slipping into the dark. But the wind is roaring in his ears, screaming at him for what he’d done. Or maybe it was just cheering him on.
Four years. Four years of wearing Mori’s ghost like a second skin. Four years of sitting in that suffocating office, staring at monitors, weaving a thread so fragile that a single misstep would have snapped it. He became the villain. Became the monster everyone feared, the tyrant Oda-saku hated.
‘Oda-saku.’
The memory of his hand on his shoulder in that bar, the cold, empty look in his eyes when he drew his gun on him, it burnt worse than the friction of the air against his skin. He hated him. He looked at him and saw only the Boss of the Port Mafia.
‘Good. That means it worked.’
‘If he hates me, he stays on the side of the light. If he hates me, he writes his novel. In this universe, among the infinite, terrible configurations of reality, this is the only one where he lives.’ The only world where he gets to sit by a window, watching the sunset, dipping a pen into ink instead of burying his friends.
His life was a small price to pay for that. A pathetic, miserable life it was anyway.
The lights of Yokohama were blurring together by now. It looks like a constellation of fallen stars.‘Akutagawa is with the Agency. Atsushi understands his worth. The city is safe. The Agency and the Mafia will balance each other out, just as they were meant to. The book is secure.’
He’d woven the perfect tapestry. And now, the weaver is finally allowed to untangle himself.
‘It’s funny. The scarf, Mori’s scarf, is trailing above me like a streak of blood in the night sky. I wonder if Chuuya will find it. I wonder if he’ll curse my name while he cleans up the mess I left behind. Let him. Let them all. They are alive to curse me, and that is the punchline of the joke.’
‘The air is getting heavier. The pavement is growing closer.’
For the first time in twenty-two years, the weight in his chest was lifting. The silence he’s been chasing through every poison, every rope, every river... it’s finally right here. ‘It’s waiting for me at the bottom.’
He closed the book. He saved the story.
‘Ah... Oda-saku. The bar is closed, but... I think I can finally rest now.’
The silence is the first thing that goes wrong.
It isn't the deep, velvety quiet of the afterlife. It is a heavy, ringing absence of sound that vibrates right through his skull.
Then comes the smell. Not the sterile scent of fading consciousness, but copper, wet asphalt, and rain.
‘No.’
Dazai’s eyes snap open.
The sky above him isn't a blur of rushing air; it’s a dark, static expanse of clouds framed by the jagged silhouettes of Yokohama’s skyscrapers. He is lying flat on his back. The rough texture of the pavement bites into his palms.
He gasps, a ragged, desperate sound that tears at his throat, and the sudden influx of oxygen burns his lungs like liquid fire. He can feel his heartbeat. It is frantic, erratic, and undeniably alive.
‘Why?’ The word screams in his mind, shattering the carefully constructed peace of his final moments. ‘Why am I still here? The height was definitive. The math was flawless. The Book-’
He tries to move, and a white-hot spike of agony shoots through his spine, pinning him to the ground. He laughs, but it comes out as a wet, choked cough. Of course. His body is broken. The impact happened. He felt the crushing reality of it, yet the veil refused to drop.
Slowly, dragging his gaze sideways through the blinding pain, he looks at his hands. They are covered in blood, but the skin is whole. The blood isn't even entirely his own.
He isn't outside the Port Mafia headquarters anymore.
Dazai’s breath hitches. He forces his neck to turn, ignoring the agonizing protest of his vertebrae.
Dazai’s mind, the brilliant, flawless machine that orchestrated the fate of an entire city, completely shorts out. The weight of the world he just tried to leave behind crashes into the reality of the world around him.
He hadn't died. He hadn't escaped.
‘Where... am I?’