Amethyst |Dazai x Reader

20. To when it started

tw // mention of gore.

꧂☼ஜீ☼꧁

Rustic stench fills the air as the 5 men stand atop the staircase, their eyes wide and in shock as they stare into their office. Tanizaki pales and turns to a corner, looking away from the gory sight to stop himself from retching all over the floor.

The air is still. Fear and uncertainty looms over the place where the rest of the men remain, unmoving. Their throats have gone dry— rough and sandy. The hairs on the back of their necks stand as cold sweat runs down their spines.

"Ranpo.. what in the world happened here." Kunikida says, his  voice rising towards the end of the sentence, laced with confusion. Ranpo, who had been standing in front of the door to the office turns around, shaking his head and raising his hand.

"I went out to get some snacks.." He says, almost dumbfounded as he shakes the grocery bag in his raised hand.

"Where's everybody else?" Atsushi asks, panic slowly setting in as they all start to stiffly walk into their office. Tanizaki remains behind, leaning against the door frame, his face pale and sick.

"They left saying that they'd be back in an hour. I was the only one in the office and I left for 5 minutes, max." Ranpo says while standing uncomfortably close to the mass on the floor. Atsushi turns around while pulling out his phone and calling whom Dazai can only assume are their other teammates.

The brunette shifts his gaze to the body on the floor, the sight not any less nightmarish from when he had first seen it. The mutilated corpse splayed on the floor had broken ribs sticking out of the sides of its torso. Its limbs are twisted in ways the human body normally shouldn't be able to. However, the most unsettling part would be the abdomen— wide open.

"They took.. his organs?" Kunikida mumbles out before closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyebrows knitted together and Dazai immediately hears Atsushi retch behind him.

Sure enough, the body was missing its organs. Dazai shifts his gaze up, toward the barely recognizable features of the corpse. The soft evening light shines in from the windows of their office, enveloping the room in a calm warm light. However, the room remains cold, stale, and suffocating. Dazai's eyes then catches a small white peeking through the lips of the corpse.

"Atsushi-kun, could you give me a pair of gloves?" Dazai says while crouching next to the corpse, eyes unmoving. He hears shuffling behind him before he sees a white pair of gloves dangle beside his head from the peripheral of his eyes. The brunette slips on the pair of gloves and gently pokes his fingers past the slightly open bruised lips of the corpse. He then pulls out a small damp blood-stained card.

"It seems that he had lost his way. I hope he is returned well."

Dazai reads the writing on the card out loud. He hears an exhausted groan come out of Kunikida.
Dazai sighs and glances over at Ranpo, wanting at least one answer to the plethora of questions zooming through everyone's head.

"It's from Alistair Goethe. Surprise surprise." Ranpo says humorlessly. The atmosphere gets heavy as everybody's forehead crinkles in a mix of both confusion and understanding.

"But who.."

"Although his face is too disfigured to actually be able to identify him, I may or may not have sent a rat to ask around about the Goethe family a few days ago." Dazai sighs as he rips off his gloves.