Chapter Text
Her dog has been sent to the pound and Dazai is bored out of her mind. There’s no one to light her cigarettes or entertain furious conversation. Her nevrouse demener has her pacing the halls in sections of the school she wouldn’t traditionally tread.
The music corridor. A hall that’s currently unlit and always over funded, several broken down pianos line the way, a stray bow and drumstick assault her feet as she navigates such an ominous environment.
Sound proofed rooms reveal themselves, sleek pianos pressed to the wall or a drum kit snug to a corner, visible through the glass slits in the doors.
All empty. All abandoned. But not all quiet.
She’s following muffled sounds of a likely supernatural source. She comes into view of a keypad that’s illuminated green, shedding light onto the door next to it.
The door has a pain of glass that has been curiously blacked out. Dazai puts her face to it, breath steaming her vision, she wipes it away and holds her breath eyes squinting to make out the contents of the room.
There’s two figures lying atop each other in an overly friendly manner. One’s face is strewn in the others lap and a hand brushes their hair with their fingers.
Dazai, having expected some elite school gosip on where the f*ck all the money for this department comes from, tries to quietly get away. Stepping back, she slips over a drumstick and her hand crushes down on piano keys that scream in untuned notes.
Dazai whips around to check she hasn’t broken the thing but it’s hard to see in the non-existent light. Then an ominous voice speaks her name:
“Dazai?”
She startles back on herself “God?”
“Not quite.” Fyodor stands with an ivory hand extended, “come on, I’ll introduce you.”
Dazai doesn’t take her hand but she does walk forward, accepting in her own way, Fyodor pushes the door back open and Dazai follows.
There are more people then she thought, tucked into the corners, dim light illuminating their platinum hair weaved between student’s instruments. Crumbs of a lunch fit for 7 matted into the carpet. Two racks of violins hitched on the wall in front of her and to the side there are guitars vertically stored.
She doesn’t get to evaluate the rest in detail because Fyodor is pointing to people and christening them. “Ace, Sigma, Shibusawa,” who are in a small circle, playing cards puddled between them, Ace placed precisely between two rigid guitars.
Fyodor then points to the other side of the room “you’ve already met Bram,” who is sat with a bat like-lightness on a piano, across from him leaning against the wall is “f*ckuchi,” Dazai gives them a strained smile.
“And this is Nikolai.” Nikolai gives an energetic wave from where she lies on the ground and a punch of jealousy hits Dazai stomach as she realises she’s in direct alinement with the glass of door, the lap she was laying on is perpendicular next her.
“Didn’t realise you collected dust bunnies,” Dazai snarks, referring, of course, to the bright white hair of each of them.
“As if all your friends aren’t carrot tops.”
Dazai’s jaw dislodges with shock, “how the hell do you know about Oda!”
She smirks, delighted with herself “I didn’t.”
Dazai mouths like the mackerel Chuuya swears she is for a moment before Nikolai lets out an explosive giggle that reveals she isn’t humoured at all, she stops it abruptly, sticking up her hand as if to answer a question in class, though she doesn’t wait for any permission before babbling “i prefer bird analogise, if you don’t mind.”
Dazai looks to Fyodor and back to Nikolai because she simply cannot believe her eyes, “did that albino pigeon just talk?”
Nikolai squawks in a genuine, erratic, laugh. She takes out her phone from a frothy ruffle of her skirt, “Albino pigeon,” she mutters, clicking her screen in the fashion of typing “that’s hilarious.”
Over the slight din of Sigma shuffling cards, they pipe up “she keeps a list of all the nicknames she finds funny-“
“Um hum,” Nikolai confirms, flashing the screen at Dazai far too fast for her to read it, “i keep it in a list called Nicholas names.”
“Yeah I figured,” Dazai interjects probably, too tersely to naturally fit, shaking herself out of her analytical stupor, she remembers to elevate her pitch at wonky points to indicate energy and whatnot “what I can’t figure out is any of your pronouns!”
“They, them,” Sigma says while dealing the cards into three piles, Dazais eyes slip and snag on each jagged line of their haircut.
“Well i could have figured out that much.”
“The rest of us use he, him,” Ace snips, receiving his third of the deck from Sigma.
“Or she or they or it or dove,” Nikolai clarifies for herself with a squeal “and yourself?”
“Just she, her.”
There’s a stale moment of silence as Dazai doesn’t know where to put herself, subtly Fyodor flicks her fingers inviting her to join her on the ground next to Nikolai.
Dazai parks herself separately to them and curls into a comfortable ball. Beside her she hears a debate on composers and the snatching of cards.
“Well if you’re not going to do it i will!” Nikolai chirps before collapsing herself into Fyodor’s lap. Fyodor similes down at them, returning her hand to meticulously to brush through his hair. As her fingers meet her nape Dazai realises is cut into two disinct layers, one at its jaw and one that ends somewhere at its back, currently stored in a lengthy braid.
“You’re staring~” he trills, rolling his whole body around to face Dazai and perching his hands under his chin, batting her eyelids. Fyodor’s hands just persist through it’s hair, un-phased by thier display of energy.
Dazai snaps out of her glossed gaze “i like your rings,” she offers “they contrast your eyes,” they’re red and amber set into silver bands. Nikolai’s eyes are heterochromic green and blue, they’re the perfect balance for the colour wheel.
“You noticed!” She beams rolling the amber ring for emphasis.
“I’m pretty accustomed to alternative fashion choices…”
“Oh! Chuuya-chan! Of course! Say what’s the craziest thing she has in her closet, i am in a drought of inspiration,” Nikolai kicks their legs in eagerness, until their white ruffled skirt has bunched to their knees, revealing stripped white and black stockings with pitch black loafers.
“…I think Chuuya considers all of Yokohama’s thrift stores her closet so you’d have to consult one of them.”
Nikolai groans and puts her head back into Fyodor lap who smiles and keeps petting her hair. “Birdie has a lot of social anxiety, but she’s on prom committee. They want to look good for the day.” Nikolai nods, it’s truly not something Dazai would infer, what with the ruffled white shirt matching a dramatic maxi skirt, making their silhouette impossibly bold. Chuuya has a style that holds the echo of her attitude. But with these two it’s modest and mechanical manifestations of they want to present. Though her eyes flit to the staggeringly large rosary layered several around Fyodors neck and ponders what, if any, environmental factors have on their traditional way of dressing.
“And going to a charity store scares you because…”
“It’s awkward to go on your own,” Dove confirms with a groan. “And these idiots wouldn’t know fashion if it clobbered their head into a railing!”
“You could go with Chuuya,” Dazai verbalises the thought before she’s actually thought it through. Too late, Nikolai is looking at her like it’s Christmas. “Or not,” she tries to amend quickly but now Fyodor is looking at her like she just shot a puppy. “All I mean is Chuuya is nice but she’ll use anything but words to show it. And her shopping days are when she’s most acidic.”
“I could handle it!” Nikolai’s promise is illuminated by the stars in her eyes and Dazai is quickly trying to find a way to put them out.
“I’ll text her then,” she says thinking Chuuya can get herself out of this mess.
A few minutes later her phone dings with a response. Nikolai perks up to her knees at the sound, expectant as Dazai starts to read “sure i can…” Dazai grimaces “lead the bitch to water by don’t blame me if it don’t drink,” she looks up form her phone for the purpose of sincerity “this is what I mea-“
“Tell her I prefer bird analogies!”
“Ok,” Dazai agrees because this is the perfect amount of pedantic she’s known for.
Chuuya’s text comes back alarmingly fast, this time with a time and a place. “‘I can set out a bird bath, not my fault if it ends up muddier than it went in.’ She also said she’s free on Saturday around 9am if you can be there.”
“Yes.” Nikolai nods emphatically like a woodpecker “yes!”
Fyodor inserts herself into the conversation with a small groan “but i hate early weekends,” she admits, seemingly unprompted.
“But this is my dream Fedya you have to let me!” Nikolai embellishes her desire by hugging her arm into their chest and Dazai feels her heart hiccup.
“Fine, only for you dove,” it sounds so awfully close to love that Dazai feels bile pile into her throat and loom there, churning her stomach. The final push is Nikolai placing a chasted kiss to Fyodors cheek in unbridled excitement.
Dazai spears their bubble with a declaration: “sh*t i really need a piss,” she doesn’t look back, but her eyes saturate with unbidden tears, and her walk is that of one found in the process of stepping on lava.
She blinks and she’s made it to the toilet, feeble tears roll down her face like her semi formed thoughts on the matter. She really shouldn’t care and yet jealousy wraps its piping hot claws around each of her internal organs until she is sweltering and hyperventilating, trying to burst her lungs from its clad iron grip.
“f*ck!” She shouts, cracking the tension with a punch against the counter top.
“f*ck,” she whispers this time as she feels her hand throb uncontrollably, she holds it and watches it pool red under skin.
She makes an alarmingly familiar trip to the nurses office, sweeps by the beds she usually lays in claiming: cough, migraine, plague!
“Osamu,” the nurse greets taking off his glasses. “You really shouldn’t be taking anymore time out of lessons-“
Dazai shoves her hand in his face “i think it’s broken.” Her tone is cold and serious. Devoid of buoyancy and it catches him off guard. Readjusting his glasses he takes her hand gently and twists it from side to side.
“Astoundingly, i think you might be right, how did this happen?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she sighs taking the un offered vacant plastic seat and crossing her legs “does this mean i can get out of school?”
“Yes, i will have to contact your father.”
“A necessary evil, i suppose.”
Mori arrives in a timely manner and Dazai feels something twist in her chest as she flees the property. Relief at actually getting away or a heart attack she’s not sure.
As she gets into the passenger seat, Mori flicks down his glasses “can i see?”
Dazai resolutly gaurds her hand away “you are a heart surgeon, what would you know about arms!”
The answer sits and seeps out of the cup holder between them. Nothing. Mori starts the engine and rolls off into the day. He just sees an opportunity to observe someone. Everything is akin to an experiment to him.
It makes for a good surgeon but an entirely morbid parent.
Dazai sits in a blank waiting room for an hour and when she’s finally called Mori remarks at how fast the service is. Her arm is then poked and twisted, inspected, then X-rayed.
“It’s a hairline fracture in your wrist,” the doctor announces, “thankfully minimal damage but you’ll need a cast for six weeks minimum, possibly up to eight.”
Right in time for her exams.
————
The cast leaves her arm practically unarticulated, so when she wakes and spins to her dresser she’s slept in for an hour.
She enters the virtual world of chess one handed and flicks away all the alarms that automatically set each day.
She can tell by the drawn out responses to her moves mean that Fyodor is probably playing under her desk at school as they edge nearer to Fyodor’s almost scheduled win.
Dazai yawns as she gets out of bed, pushing open her door with her working arm and trotting down stairs with the stress free energy of having an actual excuse to skip school. Even if that excuse throbs like a bitch under an all white cast.
Dazai is just sprinkling cereal over her bowl of water when her father comes slithering through the door.
“Mori? did you forget something?” She asks, avoiding eye contact and going to take the sugar off the shelf next to the tea bags.
“Osamu,” he says scrubbing his hand over his face while she innocent lobs eight spoonfuls of sugar into her bowl before mixing. “You need to be in school. I just got a call demanding your presence.”
“But-“
“This is non-negotiable. You are going to every class until the end of the year.” The and then I’m kicking you out. Goes unsaid.
Dazai grimaces, discards her spoon and goes to sip her cereal from the lip of the bowl. “Fine,” she spits out along with the first gulp, it’s stale.
She stares down her closet trying to find something one hand friendly, finally settling on a stretchy skater skirt she can shimmy into and a loose back jumper to throw over it that slips over her cast and she bunches it to her elbow leaving the other long and covered. She feels so exposed without her leg bandages. It makes her dread for institution coil more as she slips trainers onto un-socked feet and folds her coat over her arm before heading out the door.
With Mori driving her to school the atmosphere is cold. Dazai wrestles her coat on with one hand, awkwardly shifting its tail under her strapped-in-self. Mori doesn’t acknowledge any of the kerfuffle. They never look at each other anymore when they can help it.
Gone are the days of Mori smothering her with fatherly affection like: making sure she eats and stays clean and has an infinite supply of pretty dresses.
In are the count down of days until he can kick her out.
Good.
Even with him just next to her she feels like a caged animal.
When the car finally stops she bursts out of it and sprints to the first door that will swallow her.
—————
“Osamu, can i talk to you for a minute,” Dreaded words said by her maths teacher as she has finally failed at fleeing the class at break neck speed.
She turns around from the door and grins “of course,” she then waits for everyone to leave. Except everyone doesn’t leave, Kunikida stays. He’s still as beautiful as her freshman crush on him would tell her.
“Dazai, as you have failed to produce any real work over the course of this term coupled with exams being so close i am insisting you in a tutor program. At least until you can prove you will pass this class. I’m sure you’re aware of Kunikida as he is top of the class, you will work through these work sheets and hand them in by the end of this week, i will continue this system until exams unless i feel confident that you will pass.”
Dazai grits her teeth to bar her thoughts from being verbalised, acknowledging that she has let her performance slip enough that her just scraping a pass seems reasonable.
“I will leave you to schedule,” her teachers says, sweeping up her laptop and planner and booking it to lunch.
“So when are your frees?” Kunikida asks, pushing up his glasses at the center of their frame.
Dazai blows air through her lips, “think i could get away with scheduling it to clash with my other lessons?”
“Absolutely not! We need to-“
Dazai sighs and takes the thick stack of papers. “Yeah, yeah whatever, I’ll get these back to you in some sort of state,” she says walking down the rows of tables and out the door.
She walks in the direction of her lockers care free, except behind her she comes the scattered steps in the rhythm of running. “Dazai!” Kunikida shouts only stopping to clamp his hand on her shoulder to turn her around. Panting softly, he reorganises himself, slipping his hand off her and standing before her with full posture.
Beige blazer buttoned neatly at his waist with a black waist coat and bright white sh*t tucked underneath. Ew she realises, assessing her own coat, they’re clashing. She starts walking backwards as he talks at her. He follows at an appropriate pace, determined to convert her to the religion of scheduling.
His talk is drowned by the noise and colour of the corridor as people negotiate places to each lunch because the dining room is always so crowded.
Her peripherals finally fill in the site of her own locker. She opens it and roughly shoves the work in. Kunikida is still talking at her.
“Kida, i promise to get these back to you with answers and your reputation intact.”
“I insist we meet at least once!” His face furiously red and wet with repulsive beads of sweat, his sweet façade gone.
Dazai slams the door of her locker and smiles something sugary to even out the mood, “How does after school sound? In the library.”
He brightens up, “yes that will work wonders,” and finally he leaves her, muttering about being late to lunch.
…late for lunch…
Dazai doesn’t have lunch because Chuuya isn’t here and she considers going back to the music store room but she’d rather rip out her stomach than let it rot like that again.
She instead saunters around the schools perimeter, noting the empty classrooms, ironically she ends up in front of the dinners, its steam of life puffing out from midway up the building, skimming past abandoned classrooms. Her eyes lock onto her new target.
How does she get up there?
Fire escape.
Around the side of the building, there is a marvellously rusty ladder leading to several worth of stairs layers. She clambers up it one-handed pulling herself up with disappointingly efficient success. She runs the rickety stairs chanting “school is stupid,” so that someone may snatch her eloquent last words from her lips should she slip and fall to her death.
When she get to the top unscathed she looks down at her shoes, then unties her laces so she’ll have more success going back down.
The door she’s faced with is uncharacteristically modern for the building, a sleek slab of grey something, with no indication of where it should open. The window next to it is in a white wooden frame that’s warped and it’s paint cracking. Roughly, she jitters it with her hand roughly forces up. It slides open and she climbs in.
She races to the other side where the steam brushes past the long window, unfortunately the only part that opens it out of her reach. She grabs a table and marries it to wall under the window.
Standing on top of it, she twists the lever that that keeps the window latched in place and it pokes out over the dinning room. The steam tickles the glass but doesn’t venture in, so she lights a cigarette and imbues the steam with smoke, polluting the earth one puff at a time.
——————
The library is somewhere Dazai has never gone willingly and certainly not with work under her arm.
As the door chimes with her entrance she reflexively checks the table beyond the reception desk where she usually drags Chuuya from her studies- But it’s of course empty of anyone important.
Instead she walks the between rows of bookshelves and finds Kunikida in the middle section, face down in a book. She slides into the opposite seat and she has the expansive view to the narrow blocked off back of the room. Only a few students peak out on their barron tables. No one relevant.
Kunikida is buried in his book so Dazai indulges her enjoyment of disturbing the rested by poking him in the shoulder. “Hey,” he says as he peels himself away from the page to look at her.
He raises an eyebrow at the sheets she’s now spreading across the table. “I honestly didn’t think you would show,” he admits with an awestruck tone.
“Well i did,” she snaps, picking up the one she’s put in front of her to go answer it and then realises “sh*t I forgot my pen.”
“Shush.” Kunikida insists as he slips her one across the table. He puts the book down and slides up his glasses again.
“Thanks,” she mumbles leaning away and setting pen to paper.
“So what are you struggling with?”
“My mental health has been atrocious!” She says conversationally, both eyes on the paper, but settling comfortably into the back of her chair.
Kunikida’s sigh travels across time and space. “I mean about the work Dazai. And keep your voice down.”
“Yeah, where it says ‘name’ do i put first or last or both?”
“Both,” he says sarcastically, thinking he’s won.
Dazai restrains a chuckle as she puts Kunikida Dopo atop the page. Then proceeds with filling in the correct answers but where it says method she loops her pen around again and again, perfecting the art of cursive dick drawing.
“I suppose you want to know what to write in the date section as well,” he prompts, trying to get his lesson back on tack.
Dazai looks up shrouding her face in a façade of confusion “I’m not just supposed to write ‘me and you,’ with a question mark?”
Regretfully she times her automated comment as someone to walk down the isle between them, meaning even in theatrical whisper someone heard her joke about dating this loser.
Kunikida frowns and pushes his chair from the table slightly, getting ready to go but bound by his schedule. “Dazai, you need to take this more seriously.”
“Yeah-huh,” she agrees as she writes in bold PATRIARCHY in the final method box.
Dazai sighs sliding the paper around on the glossy surface of the desk, right into his compromised eyeline “this is what happens,” she snaps venomously lowly so not even some f*cker walking down the middle can hear her “when you try to supervise me into working.”
She stands up and slides the pen in her pocket and primly taps the papers into a uniform chunk with a sickly sweet smile.
——————
At home Dazai looks over the pages applying the appropriate answers and formulas where needed. It occurs to her, as she gets to the bottom of the last paper, that her teacher had employed the tutor system so that she wouldn’t copy from the textbook answer section currently open to her left.
——————
She’s just been sent digital confetti when she shuts the door to her locker and Kunikida stands there, in a place so often frequented by Chuuya that it throws her off kilter.
“You have my pen,” he says with an out stretched hand, “I’d like it back, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Maybe i do mind,” Dazai grumbles, already rooting around for it. It’s hard with her cast on as she searches the opposite pocket. “Found it,” and as she hands it to him she realises it’s an expensive one with a silver barrel and gold strewn through it. He takes it but his gaze slips to her cast by her side.
“Do those need re-doing?” He asks, annoyingly tentative.
“No, they’re all good,” she babbles blushing in embarrassment and stepping away “i have my fair share of bandage experience.”
“I suppose, but tell me if you need help.”
“Why? are you an expert on it?” She shoves the words out, trying to form a shield between her and kindness.
“Dazai, did you forget that i volunteer in the medical office?” A satisfactory amount of frustration seeps into his face, weighing down his shard eyebrows“We see each other every other day with your record.”
“Oh,” Dazai clicks her freed up fingers “that’s where i know you from!”
Kunikida rolls his eyes and she can feel the ghost of Chuuya try to posses him to tell her to piss off. Instead he turns from the bait and gets swallowed by the corridor.
——————
It’s not the first suspension Chuuya has had but it’s certainly the most adventurous Dazai has gotten with her free time, watching people filter into the dining room while she smokes from above.
“Was it on purpose?”
Dazai turns only her head, having become intimately familiar with Foydors voice, it no longer startles her.
Dazai just tilts her head curiously. “Was what on purpose?”
“Him.” She answers curtly, jaw snaping back to its place. An unexpected jealousy perforates the air, smothering the question of how she got in without using the fire escape.
Evidently, however, person who’d walked past in the library was most likely Fyodor or maybe she had seen him at her locker- the miscommunication of her blush and off kilter cadence bunched with Fyodors knowledge of her adolescent crush on him leads to a sweet chance at revenge.
“Yes,” she chances, with a slight smirk.
She goes rigid in the door frame, but smiles, just the left edge of her lip. A game has begun.
“You know Dove and I are just friends, right?”
“What else would you be?” Dazai indulges, stepping down from the table, smashing her cigarette out on its surface and leaving its body abandoned, in favour of hotter things.
“So there’s nothing to be jealous of,” Fyodor peels away from the door and venters into Dazais territory.
Dazai keeps her deadpan already winning this argument “obviously,” she agrees, punctuating herself with a step.
Fyodor flushes as much as her pale pallor allows, trying to find her footing as she edges forward. “We’ve been like that for years and it’s not going away.”
“Understandable,” Dazai promises as she passes another table.
Fyodor finally starts to mirror her fluidity and takes drifting steps forward, unabashedly smirking. “So you’re sure you can handle us being intimate like that?”
“Not at all. But i can try,” Dazai says stopping in the middle of the room Fyodor a step away.
A step she takes eagerly like a drug “But for the record,” she clarifies as their faces meet, their gravity the new orbit of the stationary tables. Fyodor diverts her lips so that she ghosts the words over Dazais ear “i’d let you be much more intimate with me.” Shivers cascade down her shoulder and warm every inch of her lower spine.
She responds softly, stepping back, conceding some sort of defeat. Fyodor’s face melts imperceptibly, lips drooping down at the corners and puffy sleeves of her dress deflating with the slump of shoulders, a disappointment she’s trying to conceal.
She smoothes it over with a concerned veneer“are you sure those don’t need replacing?”
Dazai stifles her blush this time, Fyodor is probing for conversation starters not genuine kindness.
Dazai can still win this. Make her flustered and she’ll surely retreat.
“Quite. though, i would appreciate,” she pulls back the length of her coat that covers her bear legs “if you bandaged my other limbs,” she drops her coat back down and pulls out bandages. “My legs are getting cold.”
“I think i can handle that,” Fyodor says, effortlessly taking the bandages from her hand.
Dazai breath stalls, there’s not even a hint of shame to her face as Fyodor drops to her knees, deftly excavating a thigh with one hand and slipping the end of the bandages around its curve; then wrapping it until it kisses her knee. She drops the roll to the floor, then starts unbuttoning her dress.
Dazai’s jaw drops and she is all too breathy in her response to hide how this is effecting her “Fyodor-“
“What?” Then from beneath her crucifix and collar of her dress she pulls up a second chain. A ball chain. And threaded through is the loop of a silver pair of scissors.
“Why on earth?-“
She cleanly snips the edge of the strip and tucks it into the wrap. “I’m a lesbian, Dazai.”
Dazai swallows dryly looking at the ceiling because anywhere else feels wrong. Or well it feels nicer than wrong but she doesn’t want to get into that at school.
Then the weight of the pun comes crashing down on her with a weight that keeps her on earth. “that cannot be the only reason,” she tries not to squeak as Fyodor unearths her other leg and unknowingly brushes across a sensitive slither of inner thigh while delicately bandaging it.
She hums beneath her “there’s self defence I suppose or slashing mens tiers but if there were a deeper meaning you would have to find it out for yourself.”
Dazai steps back, once she feels the tuck of bandages under her other leg. “Good to know,” she breaths, face aflame. She veers off to casually support all her weight on an adjacent desk as Fyodor stands. Triumphant, practically luminous, smirk on her face.
“Well I’ll be seeing you on Saturday, I presume.”
“Yeah,” Dazai agrees thoughtlessly, gaze drifting indulgently to where her dress is unbuttoned to show the snow boning of a white bra-
Fyodor’s hands sweep upward, neatly blocking her view by dropping her necklace back under her maroon dress and swiftly fastening her buttons.
“Perfect.”
“Yeah,” Dazai agrees again, but pouts when Fyodor turns and leaves.
Dazai blinks herself back onto the planet finding one message on her earthly inbox.
Wait, did she just agree to something?
