mother, mom, ma | d.fyodor/o.dazai

7. but can you see me?

A woman was helping her son who had fallen into a puddle. Her face looked apologetic, dainty features scrunched up when her son wailed into her bosom. His knees were scraped, and rivulets of diluted blood trickled down into pink, unfurling away into the puddles. He kept crying even when his mother tugged him away into a building, softly cooing at him almost lovingly, as though the sight of blood had made her weak and vulnerable.

You felt your lower lip tremble. Your heart twisted into knots, unable to qualm the burst of loneliness. It slowly turned into pain, and you were unable to stop yourself from crying in public, keening over to curl into a ball against a wall. It felt as though something inside of you had loosened, like a tightly stitched wound, and the despair in your ribcage began to throb uncontrollably, like an open laceration. Then you laughed into your hands, fingertips cold and clammy, and then it turned into a wet, choking laugh, the kind you get when you just can't believe your fucking luck, that kind of pitiful noise. And you tried to give yourself credit—I'm allowed to cry—before that slipped through the sieve of an excuse and you found yourself uncontrollably sobbing, upper body lurching, like an animal was desperately flailing to crawl itself out of you. You can't stop crying, and you hated crying, not because of the snot and shit and mess but because you didn't want to feel that familiar sting of despair build up inside of you before the flesh broke and you were melting away, hands on your face, listening to your heart numb and thrash, a noise of pure animal grief rattling your throat.

You don't even recognize a coat falling over your shoulders. You assume the rainfall grew more intense as if the deeper your cries went, the greater the outpour.

"A damsel under the rain," A voice sounds out above your head. "How could I resist?"

You look up and blink away the tears, and the familiar face of Dazai Osamu comes into view. Your eyesight is still blurry, and you think he's looking at you with a face of love before it clears out like blown smoke. You tug the lapels of the coat closer to you.

"Don't bother me," You croak. "I can't deal with you right now."

The brunette takes a long hard look at you. He had assumed the noise was some cry of a stray cat that had been caught in the crossfires of a dog's jaw, and yet when he turned the corner, he was met with the dot of clothes and drenched hair, curled up, head stuck under the spray of rain to deafen your own heart throbbing cries.

"Come with me," He says. He puts a hand on your head, and the touch was so soft, so tender, like a modified strike changed last second, that it seemed to almost amend the cannibalistic violence in your heart to the point of giving out. "You'll get sick."

"Where are you going to take me?" You ask. He helps you up to your feet. His heart clenched at your red-rimmed eyes, the (e/c) irises, blown into solar eclipses from your pupils, a strange dark desolation to them like the noise of two metal doors clicking shut. He feels the cold rainwater sink deep into his bones.

"Somewhere safe."

You walk through the vague, blurry streets, stumbling and pitifully dragging your feet against the pavement before the rain stopped. You look up and you're in some sort of building, and Dazai's pressing a button to the lift.

"Where are we?"

"The Agency," He replies. He keeps the elevator door with a hand against it to keep it barred open, looking at you expectantly. "You'll get a cold like that, (last name)."