Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter twenty-three

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Mori POV

The sun outside of my office was setting lazily over the Yokohama skyline, casting a red hue in the dark room, coloring the room a deep blood red. I read over the paperwork in front of me with a passive gaze, looking for any signs of lies or backhand deals that should cause me to have to take action. Today's file was a report on a ghost-like organization sweeping through other counties since the end of the war.

The mafia is a bloody place, a dark one filled with night terrors that we choose to disguise as humans. But just because we all share these monstrous traits, that doesn't mean that there weren't still some men stupid enough to try and betray the ruler of these monster like men.

There was a knock on my office door, firm yet sluggish at the same time, almost as if the person on the other side of the door had given up on trying to care at all. Like they'd all but given into the monster living in their brain, almost ready to be shaped into the perfect monster that I'd been seeking to create all along.

Moments later the door opened letting a thoroughly bandaged Dazai into the ghostly room. There was a look on the teen's face, one that I'd barely seen since the appearance of the former Sheep King, Chuuya Nakahara. The boy's gaze was cold, devoid of almost anything resembling what one would call life. It was a look that I hadn't seen since the shorter teen officially joined the Port Mafia.

It was a look that I missed dearly.

The darkness there reminded me of the night that Dazai failed to bring his partner to me despite all of the perfect preparations that I'd made for the boy. It'd been a disappointment that I'd have to wait for the shorter teen to join us, but the punishment had been worth the wait.

The results of the two of them working together since haven't been bad either.

The whole situation would be perfect if it wasn't for that pesky light in the younger boy's eyes. I'd been watching the way that the boy's eyes seemed to become impossibly darker as his days spent in the mafia went on, coming closer and closer to a complete darkness, but then Chuuya came along. The other teen lighted that darkness, undoing so much of the work that I'd put into molding the younger boy. It was almost enough to make me wonder if my trying to polish a diamond with a diamond had only served to make the original one duller in the end.

Good to see that I was wrong.

The slender teen had those ever present bandages of his wrapped tightly around his malnourished frame, though they seemed different today. In recent months, the bandages had served as little more than a form of protection, hiding the pasts attempts of the suicidal teen and his various sessions of self harm, only being using the bandages for their intended purpose on a few areas of his body.

Today they were being used for their old purposes, showing that something had happened for the teen to revert to his old habits.

How interesting.

The bandages were wrapped securely around the boy, shown in the way that the boy's movements were more stiff than his latest bout of easy, lazy gestures.

I guess the boy's pain tolerance has gone down since the appearance of the older teen.

I watched Dazai as he held his arms carefully at his sides while moving from the door to Elise's side, keeping a careful distance from the girl so as to not accidentally nullify the ability in the process. The brown haired boy always greeted the sentient ability first when he came into my office, forcing me to wait, something that he knew better than anyone that I didn't like to do.

If anyone else were to have pulled something like this, shown such disrespect to me as their boss, they're body would've already been cooling on the ground and a cleaning crew called in to make sure that the blood didn't stain anymore than it had to. But it makes the bandaged boy happy to make me wait when he knows that I won't do anything about it, and it makes Elise happy to be given special treatment by my right hand, the reason why I let the teen get away with making me wait. It doesn't hurt that their little exchange of greetings gives me time to finish any thought that I was in the middle of writing or processing.