010

Another mission. Another vanishing act. Another pairing with Dazai.

You didn’t mind. Not really.

The work was simple.

Mafia members had been disappearing, and Mori wanted answers. You were told to investigate, and Dazai had been assigned to tag along.

A test, maybe. A lesson, more likely. Not for you, though.

It didn’t take long to figure out the culprit was an ability user.

Too clean, too quick. No blood, no trace. Only a few cryptic rumors floating around the backstreets, spoken in hush tones. Men walking off on their own, then simply ceasing to exist.

Not runaways. Not corpses. Just… gone.

So you came up with a plan. Pretend to be a fresh recruit. Clumsy, naive, wide eyed.

Someone who wouldn’t be missed if they, too, vanished without a sound.

Dazai didn’t question it. He watched quietly, studying your performance with a passive curiosity, like a scientist watching an animal in a glass cage.

He always did that. Observed.

He didn’t need instructions. You noticed that early on.

It was how you learned, too. Watching Mori. Studying him in the shadows until everything about him became something you could mimic.

And now, Dazai was watching you the same way.

You lured the ability user out within the hour.

He took the bait easily. Your voice trembling just enough, your eyes wide and uncertain.

He crept close, confident in his success.

You gave him a soft smile. Then you vanished.

Teleportation. One second there, the next beside him.

He didn’t even have time to scream.

You buried your blade in his throat and watched the light go out in his eyes.

"Amateur," you muttered, wiping the blood off your weapon.

Unfortunately, his death didn’t solve anything. The missing members were still missing.

Dead, likely. Dismantled into nothingness.

That wasn’t your concern. That was Mori’s problem now.

You’d done what you were told. Remove the threat. The rest was just bureaucratic decay.

As you walked back through the rain slick alleys, your shoes tapping against the pavement, Dazai matched your pace in silence.

“You can teleport,” he finally said, voice devoid of emotion.

“So why are you walking?”

You didn’t glance at him. “To keep you in check,” you replied smoothly.

“Mori’s orders.”

He gave you a sidelong look. “Liar.”

He's not saying that Mori's orders were a lie. He's saying that your reason for not leaving him alone is a lie.

You smirked. “Caught me.”

A beat of silence passed between you. Then you turned to him fully and said, “I find you interesting.”

He blinked slowly. “Interesting how?”

“Strange,” you clarified. “Fascinating. I want to understand you.”

Another pause.

Then, quietly, he said, “There’s nothing fascinating about me. I’m just someone who wants to die… preferably painlessly.”

You laughed, not mockingly, but softly. Genuinely.

“That’s part of it,” you admitted. “But not the whole. It’s your eyes.”

“My eyes?”

You nodded. “They look like mine. Not now. Not exactly. But back then… when I used to ask myself the same thing over and over again without anyone to give me an answer to.”

Dazai didn’t answer. He looked ahead instead, expression unreadable.

Then he asked, “What do you think about life?”

You didn’t answer immediately. You looked up at the gray sky instead, the way it bled over the city in dull colors, the way the air felt heavy, like it, too, was waiting for something awful to happen.

“I used to ask that question all the time,” you murmured.

“Why am I alive? What’s the point? What’s the reason? What’s the purpose?”

“And?” Dazai asked.

You stopped walking. He stopped with you. You looked him straight in the eye and gave him the truth.

“Life is a game of pain. That’s all it is.”

He didn’t speak. You kept going.

“You’re born without asking to be. You grow up in whatever chaos the universe decided to drop you into. And the moment you start to think maybe, just maybe, you understand how it works, it breaks you.”

“People talk about love, hope, dreams, like they're real things. But they’re just bandages.”

“Delusions we wrap around our emptiness to keep from bleeding out.”

You stepped closer, your voice dropping, darker now.

“I used to think if I could find a reason, it would all make sense. If I knew my purpose, the pain would feel worth it.”

“But then I realized… the pain is the purpose. The suffering is the constant. Everything else is temporary.”

Dazai’s eyes were locked on you now, unblinking.

“I live because I can. Because pain is the only thing that reminds me I’m still here. And maybe that’s insane. But at least it’s honest.”

A long silence stretched between you. Then you added, softly, “You feel it too, don’t you? That hollowness. That ache in your chest that doesn’t go away, no matter what you do.”

He said nothing.

“You’ve tried to end it,” you continued.

“More than once. But it never worked. Why? Because you’re still looking. You’re still hoping to find someone, or something, that makes it make sense. You want to die… but you haven’t yet. That means something.”

His eyes widened slightly. Just slightly.

You tilted your head. “You’re not weak for wanting to die. But you are stubborn for not doing it. That makes you interesting.”

Still no reply. But his fingers twitched slightly at his side.

You gave him a small smile.

“I don’t expect you to agree. I don’t care if anyone does. But I know I’m not wrong.”

He looked away. “You’re messed up.”

“So are you.”

A long breath escaped his lips. Then he asked, “If pain is the only constant… why not just end it?”

“Because I still haven’t figured out why my eyes looked like that,” you whispered.

“And now I see them in you. That means I have more to learn.”

The silence returned, stretching again. But this time, it felt heavier.

Then, without warning, Dazai started walking again. He didn’t speak. Didn’t glance your way.

But he didn’t leave your side, either.

And when you looked at him, you saw it. Just the tiniest flicker of recognition.

A kindred spirit.

He understood.

Not in the way normal people understand things. Not through sympathy. But through resonance.

Your words had wormed their way into him. Cracked something open. You could see it behind his eyes now. The awareness, the curiosity.

He was going to follow you.

Not because he liked you.

Not because Mori told him to.

But because he needed to.

Because your madness made more sense than the empty comfort the world tried to sell him.

And you?

You were going to let him.

Because for the first time in a long while… someone looked at you, and didn’t see a monster.

They saw a mirror.