Chuuya POV
I left mafia headquarters, arriving at the airport about an hour and a half before the flight was scheduled to take off, horror stories from other mafiosos ringing in my ears from missing the flight because they were caught in airport security and having to figure out how to get a new one without the boss finding out. When I made it to the gate indicated on my ticket, I saw a sight that I never thought I would see.
Dazai was standing alone in the airport with a bookbag of all things on his back, a blue one at that. I'd come to the airport early fully expecting to be waiting on the other teen to show until just before the flight was called for from final boarding. The bandaged teen was good at showing up exactly when needed for missions, but tended to avoid people as much as possible for as long as possible when he could, a fact that I was sorry to have to know.
On top of that, the teen was actually wearing his jacket the correct way, his bandaged arms going through the sleeves instead of letting them hang loose like he always does. It was such a strange sight that my eyes glazed over him when I was scanning the crowd the first time on the way to the terminal's gate.
Walking up close to the teen, I noticed the way that the other boy had his hands in his pockets, reminding me of the way that I used to keep mine. The taller teen had his back to me, watching the large screen on the wall, probably double checking that the terminal hadn't changed last minute since the flight was supposed to arrive any minute now.
The boy hummed lightly when I was right behind him, stepping up to my spot at the other teen's side. "I was wondering when you would get here," the teen started, tearing himself away from the board to look at me, "Chuuya."
My body shook subtly at the sight from the other boy, at the sound of the teen's voice. There was a deadness in the other boy's expression, one much more profound and pronounced than what usually reseted there most days. He looked like a living corpse.
Chuuya.
My own name stung in my ears as the other teen said it. It wasn't that Dazai hadn't said my name before, one of the first times that we spoke it was on our first mission together when Shirase was pointing a knife at the teen's throat, it was just that he'd never said it this way before. There was no scorn, anger, or playfulness in the other's tone, there wasn't anything at all.
"You knew that I was coming?" I asked, shifting the weight of the strap on my duffle bag.
I wasn't too surprised that he already knew, expected it even. Despite the way that the other teen tends to act, the boy had a real level of intelligence to him, one that I'm ashamed to admit that I can't measure up to. He had to be that smart to properly play his role in the mafia. Something like this would be child's play to the mafia boss's right hand.
"I figured that Boss would send someone to watch over me and make sure that I didn't get myself killed, or just off myself all together during my leave," the other teen explained.
The taller teen didn't even look at me as he spoke, opting to just watch the rest of the people walking around in a rush around us. They way that the other boy spoke just now, it wasn't his normal hopefulness or childishness that he used when talking about death. There was no longing in the other's tone, but a seriousness that made me wonder if it was a joke or not, if it ever was. In this moment, in the other's tone, the boy's death seemed as real of a thing as the bandages lining the younger teen's skin.
I stood there, wondering just what to say to this new version of the teen, how to speak to the boy that I didn't really seem to know. The last time that Dazai had spoken like this, I'd only been in the mafia a few days at the time, but I didn't really have to deal with him then, we'd just gotten drunk instead.
Our flight was called over the airport intercom after not much longer, a bored sounding woman that seemed like she needed a cup of coffee calling out the boarding groups right after the announcement.
"Come on," the taller teen says, already walking away towards the boarding gate without looking to see if I was following or not.
I stared at the other teen's back feeling my anger levels rising at the taller boy's blatant dismissal.
"Hey!" I yelled, following behind the other teen to the boarding line, picking up speed as he did. "Don't order me around, you shitty walking roll of bandages!"
I was expecting some type of quip about my height to come shooting back at me, maybe something about seeing if we had enough time to buy milk real quick, or if they offered it on the plane, but nothing like that ever came. The only response that did come was one that almost made me screech to a halt in the middle of the airport.
"Fine," Dazai agreed easily.
The teen continued forward, not seeming to notice or care about the consequences attached to the teen's words. About the strangeness of them.
Just, what the hell happened to you?
Dazai, since the day that we met, when I crashed him through a building or two, the other teen always seemed like he didn't care about anyone else, only caring about himself and his perfect, painless suicide. To say that he cared about himself was stretching it all a little far as well.
The only reason that the other boy seemed to tolerate me was because he found my willingness to argue and fight with him, with someone that most in the Port Mafia were wary of before he even officially joined, entertaining enough to keep around. That and I'm one of the few people that can read the teen well enough for him to not have to explain all of his convoluted schemes and scams to me for me to understand what he wanted from me.
But now...
The other teen's behavior was something that couldn't even be properly described as cold. To be purposefully cold to some, that takes emotions from the other person, but the boy before me didn't seem to have any to spare. It was almost like he didn't care about anything at all, like I was nothing to him at all. But for that to be true, it meant that the bot standing in front of me did care before, cared about me of all things. And now, he doesn't. Now he can't.
I don't really know how I was supposed to feel about that.
—-
Chuuya POV
We boarded the plane, finding our middle class seats towards the back of the machine. Dazai let me through first, willingly giving up the window seat without any type of fighting as he put my bag in the overhead luggage, choosing to keep his own at his feet.
There was no one else in the row with us, so when the other boy sat down, he took the far right seat, leaving the middle empty of everything but whatever emotional baggage we seemed to be carrying hanging between us.
I glanced out the window, taking in the night scene of the airport. The flight is supposed to be about sixteen hours from here to New York, something that I was tired just thinking about. Whether we're going somewhere else after New York or staying there, I didn't know, but I did know that I was going to try and sleep during this long, awkward flight, jet lag be damned, as New York is thirteen hours behind us.
I glanced beside me, bored at the sight out of my window, we haven't taken off yet, so it was just a bunch of commercial planes taxiing around the airport, the sight beside me was much more interesting than any of that.
Dazai was sitting in his seat with something akin to perfect posture for the first time since I've met the boy, his back was so straight that Mori might faint if he saw it from all of the time he tried to get the teen to sit properly during meetings. The other boy had a hand on each of the armrests, his nails subtly digging into the cheap leather, as the teen's lips moved in something of a silent prayer.
"Are you scared of flying?" I asked bluntly, not really caring if it was insensitive or not. Dazai and I have never really been a pair that carefully treads over the other's boundaries. We either know better than to ask about some things, or just come right out and say it, like now.
"No," the other teen replied in a more monotone voice than normal. The boy loosened his grip on the armrest almost subconsciously before crossing his arms slowly. "Just the forces in it."
Forces in it?
I shook my head, turning away from the teen and back to the window. I didn't even want to ask what the younger boy meant by what he just said, deciding to leave the teen alone until something that actually made sense came up.
I layed down in the seat, leaning my head against the window as I tried to move into a more comfortable position, letting the pre take off announcements flow in and out of my ears like some kind of odd white noise.
I was asleep before the plane even took off.
—-
Dazai POV
I let the other teen fall asleep before I moved my arms back to their spot on the armrests, my nails digging back into the poorly made leather. Really, it was as I told the other boy, I didn't mind flying, but the idea of being shot out of the sky by my temperamental uncle didn't really seem like to pleasant of a way to die, Icarus sure didn't seem to like it when it was his turn all those years ago. I wasn't really all that interested in seeing if the water truly felt like cement when you hit it after falling from the height that we would soon be at after take off.
The plane jerked forward, moving towards the runway as it steadily gained speed. The seat belt light came on, something that I'd already taken the liberty of putting on myself before they chose to remind us of it. The plane moved faster and faster, gaining speed with each passing second.
I felt the moment that the plane took off from the ground, the way that gravity seemed to be calling it back down to the safety of the earth below us. The way that the thrusters fought back, securing our spot in the air. I didn't need the window seat to know what the scene outside looked like, all of the small buildings and even tinier city lights.
It made my dead heart thrum wildly in my chest.
I held onto the armrest with a death-like grip until the final bit of turbulence calmed down, slowly retracting my arms and placing them back into my lap, being careful not to upset the still sore wounds there.
The cabin lights dimmed overhead, darkening the plane for the other passengers on board to sleep during the long ride. Reaching up, I turned on the dim reading light, angling it towards me before reaching down to the blue book bad at my feet and grabbing the thick book from inside of it.
Greek Myths and Legends.
Leaning back with the book and pulling a blue highlighter from my jacket, I opened up the thick volume to the first story, skipping past the boring introduction that lied about everything in the book being nothing more than a work of ancient fiction.
Creation myths. They were boring but gave some background information as to some of the older parts of the mythology that were layers beneath the newer, more relevant stories. Not anything in this book could really be called new by any means.
Stretching out my limbs, I rearranged myself highlighter in hand, getting ready for a long sixteen hours.
—-
Chuuya POV
My eyes peeled open groggily sometime later, still filled with sleep as my body shook lightly from the rocking of the plane. Twisting my head to the other side, I tried to get comfortable again, hoping to cram in another hour or two of sleep. However, the sight that I turned to was enough to wake me up real quick from whatever slumber I was trying to go back into.
Dazai was hunched over in his seat with a book in his lap and a blue highlighter twirling in his fingers. At first I thought that it was just his damn suicide manual, but I'd seen that book enough to know that this one was much too thick to be that guide of his. Sitting up, I didn't even bother to try and hide my staring as I looked down at the pages, but when I did I was left with more questions than answers.
The words on the pages were written in an unfamiliar horizontal fashion similar to how English books are written, but while the letters were similar in fashion to the Latin alphabet, the letters themselves were strange with symbols mixed in that don't show up in Latin based languages.
"Greek," a dull voice says, the sound of highlighter being painted onto the page following the word.
I startled slightly, expecting to be caught but not have the other boy so easily explain it to me without me having to make a deal with him or do anything strange for the information. I tried to look at the other, tried to get a gauge of his expression as to why he would so easily give up something that he could have held over me, but while for once I could see the boy's face, because I was on the other side of his bandages, the teen wouldn't look at me to give me a good picture. All I got was the image of the teen putting the lid back onto his highlighter, then continuing to twirl it some more like some type of student studying for an exam.
"You know Greek?" I asked, my tone betraying just a bit of the surprise that I felt.
Although Greece is a lot closer to Japan than some of the western countries like the United States, we didn't do dealings with them. We don't really do dealings with any foreign countries, so there wasn't really a reason for anyone in the Port Mafia to have more than a passing knowledge of the English language like most non English speaking businesses. But knowing Greek, being able to read it fluently, that was definitely an oddity, especially since I've only seen the other teen studying like this when it's the books that Mori gives him on strategies and such.
The other teen nodded slightly, not seeming to care about the state of confusion that he's left me in. "Among other languages," he added tonelessly.
Realistically, I know that I really shouldn't be all that surprised at the new knowledge that I was gaining, the boy beside me was a legitimate prodigy after all, learning new languages probably wouldn't take him as long as it does for the rest of us, but it's still a strange thing to know.
I shook my head lightly with a disgruntled sigh, thinking about the late nights that we've spent on the floor in one of our offices working through what seemed to be endless amounts of paper work together. Sometimes during those nights, when we'd been at it for hours on end, I'd hear the other teen cursing lightly under his breath when he misspelled something for the third time that night. When he'd do this I'd always think that I'd just been up for too long and would call it a night not much later, because when he caressed it always sounded like it was in another language. Now I know that it was.
"What other languages do you know?" I asked, wanting to pry as much information as I could while he was so easily giving it out as the other teen was right now.
The boy highlighted a section at the bottom of his page before flipping it lazily. I almost didn't think that the other teen was going to respond as he did this, but then he puts the cap back on his highlighter and shrugs lightly before finally answering in an annoyingly emotionless voice.
"English, Ancient and Modern Greek, Russian, Morse Code and Latin if I think about it hard enough, and some basic sign language," the other teen finally replied before shifting in his seat to get to a more comfortable position.
Eight languages.
The bastard beside me knows eight languages and just says it nonchalantly as he reads through the newest page in his book.
"Why do you even need to know that many languages anyways?" I asked, my voice thick with a bitter tone close to that of envy.
The other boy simply keeps on reading, highlighting something from the section of his book that he'd just finished.
"What do you care?" The other teen spits out not bothering to look at me or acknowledge the strange glances that we were getting from the passengers around us. The boy's tone wasn't angry as his words would suggest, but was hinted with a touch of annoyance at the constant pestering.
It's progress.
"I guess I don't," was my only reply as I laid back down, closing my eyes for the rest of the flight, though I didn't get any more sleep.
—-
Dazai POV
We landed in New York at about eleven at night New York time, not making it through the endless American airport security for another hour and a half as they rechecked all of our luggage, passports, and asked our reasons for coming to the states and being in Japan. The normal invasion of privacy that they've introduced since nine-eleven.
The night was still alive with people roaming around by the time that we actually left the airport. The streets were filled with teens and college kids going to and from last minute parties and get-togethers before the start of the new school year, children enjoying their last few moments of freedom. The bars were open in full swing by now, bringing about the usual New York hub bub of motion.
Looking around at everything, at all the familiar sights, I realized that I never really thought about how I would feel when I finally stepped foot here again. A large part of me seemed to think that it didn't matter how I would feel coming back here, because I wouldn't be. I'd hoped that I would never have to come here agian, that I wouldn't be alive to have to come here and see if Thalia went through with the prophecy or not.
I'd hoped I would be dead by now.
And now that I'm here, surrounded by all of the lights and colors, the normal people doing typical things in the night, surrounded by all of the people that would find a fifteen year old with a gun or a sword strange, I couldn't really find it in myself to feel much of anything at all.
"So," a familiar voice starts at my side, cutting through my haze, "where to now?"
I turned to the side, facing the direction that the sound came from, finding a small angry teen staring up at me. For a moment I was confused by the other boy's presence, confused as to why he was there and talking to me of all things. The teen stared up at me, cocking an eyebrow at my continued silence.
"What?" The other teen asked, the annoyance evident in the other boy's tone.
Standing here, in the middle of the only city that I've ever called home, I felt like a fourteen year old kid again looking for my next mark to pickpocket. But I wasn't fourteen anymore, and I'm about the farthest thing you can get away from a kid.
Chuuya, the other teen was still looking at me with that strange piercing gaze of his. I resisted the urge to shake the useless thoughts and memories of a child long dead from my head when I saw that blue eyed stare.
You're not a lonely street kid anymore, so snap out of it you useless prick.
"First," I decided, finally answering the other teen, "we need to get you a change of clothes."
The boy glanced down at his nice clothes, the clothes that he was proud of to have picked out with Kouyou's help during his first few days in the mafia. The teen's face quickly flushed a bright red with anger.
"Hey!" The other boy protested, glaring up at me from his spot in front of me. "My clothes are fine, jackass!"
Sighing, I began to walk away, not truly in the mood for having to explain just how wrong the other teen was, but knowing that I would have to do it anyway since Chuuya wouldn't properly listen until I did.
Such a bad dog.
"You can't really believe that, can you?" I asked, glancing back at the smaller teen. I could see one of the veins on the boy's head protruding, betraying the teen's annoyance.
I slowed down a bit, letting the older boy fall in step at my bandaged side. Leaning down a bit so that the other could hear me better and so I would have to waste energy having to talk as loudly.
"Look around you," I told the other teen, waving my hand subtly at all of the passing people dressed in normal party clothes, or just regular clothes in general. "The New York scene is different from that of Yokohama, only businessmen and cosplayers dress the way we do back in Japan," I explained, pointing out the other teens running around in jeans and sneakers. "You'll attract too much attention like this."
Chuuya glared at me from my side again, not liking how sound my reasoning was. "What about you?" The teen asked, a hint of scorn entering his voice making him sound like a child that was calling their parents out on being hypocritical. "You don't exactly fit the bill either, you modern nineteenth century knockoff."
I didn't want to spend the energy needed to figure out the ginger boy's latest round of insults, so I simply just gestured to the book bag on my back, giving the smaller boy my best sly smile. I only fake it for a moment or two, just long enough for the other teen to sigh in exasperation at my antics.
"Fine," the older boy gives in, shooing me away from him with the wave of his still gloved hand.
I looked forward, digging my hands back into the coat pockets at my sides, letting my feet guide me down the old familiar paths that I used to take before. I didn't really pay attention as we walked, letting my mind wander, thinking of all of the things that I'll have to do in the near future regardless of whether the prophecy has already come to pass or not.
I was tired just thinking about it.
Only when we turned the corner did I finally come back to my senses.
We were at a familiar corner that I hadn't seen in two years, but still knew as well as the scars lining my skin. We were at a fork in the street, one that I used to walk down nearly every week. If I walked down the left street, I would end up going to the library that I used to break into and sleep at. The right street would take us to the convenience store that I would buy non-perishable foods from almost every week with my stolen money.
"What?" Chuuya's taunting voice floats into my ears, pulling my mind away from things that I hadn't thought about in almost two years. "Get lost?"
"Only in your eyes," I retort, turning away from the left street and heading down the right, sighing through the annoyed scoff that the other teen directed at me. "No," I insisted. "Just spaced out and almost went the wrong way," I explained, prepared to leave it at that, not really expecting the other teen to care enough to ask more.
The smaller boy hummed lightly. "Where does that one go then?" He asked, ignoring the weird glances that we were getting from the other people on the street. Strange looks were being thrown our way due to the way that we were dressed and the language that the two of us were speaking. Because we were different.
I thought about just lying to the boy or not answering him at all, but our relationship was already strained as it is and it was bound to only get worse from here. There wasn't really any trust between the two of us, having only met a little over a few months ago. The other teen didn't trust me and he was right not to. I've lied about everything since the day that I set foot in Japan, not even the way that I looked was real, so if I sprinkle in some truths now, maybe we can make it through this trip without killing each other.
"The library," I decided, not looking at the other teen.
The sweet sound of laughter fills my ears. It was an honest laugh of surprise without any signs of hidden malice behind it. "The library?" The boy questions once he pulls himself together, a laugh still hidden in his voice. "So you used to be a soft little nerd?" He laughs, "What happened to that?"
I shot a small glare at the boy that the other teen, regrettably, couldn't see all that well due to the bandages. "I grew up," I told him smonley. "Besides," I started, waving my hand lazaily, "I wasn't a nerd, I just slept there during the day and taught myself Japanese at night."
I looked at the other boy's reflection in the store windows as I said all this, using the light from all of the billboards and stores to catch the complicated expression on the other teen's face. He looked like someone had just told him that the world was ending.
Strange.
"You were a street kid."
It wasn't a question, but an observation made by the shorter teen, a fact that he didn't know before and was trying to see how it pieced into the image of me that he had just before.
I considered how to reply to the other boy, not wanting to give much more of myself away than I'll already have to soon enough.
"Until I fell into the hands of the Port Mafia," I confirmed, deciding to give Chuuya this final piece of honesty for now, "yeah."
I walked faster, speeding up enough that I couldn't see the other boy's reflection, that I wouldn't have to see him at all, effectively ending the conversation there.
—-
Chuuya POV
The other teen sped forward, quacking his stride to put some distance between as he's done before in the past. It was fine, I let the other boy gain enough distance that I could still keep up with him, I needed my own moment to collect myself anyways.
I stared at the boy's back, letting my mind do summersaults as it tried to process the information that I'd just been told, as I tried to stitch in the piece of information, trying to fit it seamlessly with the picture that I had of the other teen. But all I could see were the still jagged edges.
In my mind, Dazai was a young man, an annoying one who despite his penchant for suicide, never seems to try any methods serious enough to actually kill him. He was a cruel boy who's methods made even the head interrogators of the Port Mafia sick. Someone that always hid behind a mask that protected the monster living inside his human corpse from being seen when he didn't want it to be. Even when the other teen showed signs of humanity, I could never help but still see something of a thinly veiled demon hiding beneath the teen.
And yet...
Now all I could see was a little boy wandering around the streets alone. A scared boy. And even though it's just a picture in my head, something that I conjured all on my own from information that might not even be true, it hurt. It hurt to know that the other boy walking in front of me, another monster in human skin, used to be where I was only months ago. But where I had the Sheep back then, he was most likely alone. Multiple people can't live in a library together and not get caught after all.
Just how long was he alone before he found his way to Japan, to the Port Mafia?
Isn't he still alone in a way?
But when I look at the other teen, I remember the fight that we had only a week ago. The reason for the fight, the events that led to it.
He's the one that took the Sheep away from me, he made sure that I would share in his loneliness as my family was stripped away and shipped off all over the Port Mafia's reach in Japan.
The anger that I'd been fighting off ever since our fight, the anger that I'd been holding in so the few people that I'd grown to care for in the mafia didn't have to feel its sting, it started to come back to me unabiden, swelling inside my chest.
I looked away from the teen, all previous sympathies forgotten in the storm raging inside my head.
The crowd around us was still thick despite the lateness of the hour. The bandage waste was walking in front of me, leading the way to wherever he'd decided to drag me today. Drunk frat boys and sorority girls took control of the streets, each of them drunk enough that the air itself smelled like cheap alcohol.
The boy in front of me fell back into step with me, falling in close enough that it actually looked like we were out together. I glanced up at the other, wondering at the sudden change, but the sight I found was sickening in a way.
The taller teen had morphed his face into a sudden show of innocence, a look so pure from him that it reminded me of the one that he was wearing when he shot that GSS punk during our first mission together. He held that expression as we walked down the street some more, never wavering even as we entered the swarm of walking alcohol bottles that was coming our way. I was about to tell him to erase that unsettling mask from his face, but the teen's next action stopped me.
Dazai stumbled.
I looked at the younger teen, an expression of bewilderment taking over my face. The other teen never stumbles or trips in any way, he was remarkably sure footed despite his lanky form. The only time that the bastard ever stumbles is when he's hurt, but we haven't done anything in the last almost twenty hours of traveling to get the teen hurt. He never stumbles and he never does it in any way that makes someone else fall with him.
And yet, here we are.
I watched Dazai catch his balance before turning to the drunk college boy on the city sidewalk, his face made up in a convincingly apologetic expression.
"I'm so sorry," a voice said in perfect English. It took me a moment to make sense of the foreign language, only knowing a little bit of it myself, a little bit longer to place where it was coming from.
Dazai.
The boy was helping up the drunk student that he'd just knocked down, pulling him up from the concrete ground. He was apologizing while doing this, something that I didn't think that the other teen was even capable of doing.
"Are you okay?" He asked once the student was on his feet, patting the drunken teen down lightly as if to check for injuries that weren't there. "We're on our way to a costume party," the other teen lies easily, making up a convincing explanation. "This is my first time walking around like this," the boy said, gesturing to the bandages on his face. "Again, I'm so sorry."
For his part, the college student looks thoroughly embarrassed, ringing the back of his neck lightly. "It's okay," the guy said, brushing his clothes off lightly, "just don't apologize anymore, man." The student was smiling a drunk smile that I'd seen on my own face in the mirror the few times that I've gotten my hands on liquor since joining the mafia. It was a smile that said that he was too drunk to think straight. The student looked the pair of us up and down slowly as the smile deepened. "Have fun you two," he said before drunkenly walking away to catch up with his group.
I turned on the lying idiot once the student was out of earshot. "What the hell was that?" I asked, knowing that what just happened wasn't an accident, but some type of scheme that the other teen had cooked up.
The boy in question continued walking forward, not bothering to answer my question. The younger teen doesn't stop walking until we're outside some twenty-four hour store. The boy turns to me, his face back to its normal emotionless expression that I liked better than the fake.
I watched on as the teen reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a wallet that I'd never seen him have before. The other boy opens it up, pulling out all of the cash inside before casting the, presumably, stolen piece away into the alley close to us.
"That should be enough to get a shirt or two and an appropriate jacket if you really want one," he says, holding out the wad of cash to me, waiting for me to take it.
I grabbed the money wearily, not used to the other teen being so generous with his profit. No sooner than the cash was out of his hand, Dazai went inside the store next to us, leaving me to follow behind him.
When I walked inside the somewhat large store, I found Dazai waiting for me, standing by one of the benches near the store's door.
"Meet back here in an hour at most," the teen said. "If that's not enough," he said, pointing to the cash sitting uselessly in my hands, "come and find me."
With that, the boy walked away, leaving me to wonder just what the fuck just happened.