Lord Huron
Dazai and Odasaku backstory information is based off of the short story 'The Day I Picked Up Dazai' a short story that had been given out at the second week screening of the BSD Beast movie. The translation for this can be found by searching the title in Google and the completed English version should be on the first Tumbler link that shows up. There is an A and a B side (each with multiple parts). A is the original world and B is the Beast world.
—-
Atsushi POV
I tried to shove down the gnawing sensation in my gut as I tore my eyes away from the bandaged man sitting at his desk. A part of me couldn't help but wonder if it had been a good idea to leave this whole thing to Yosano, because it seemed that Dazai has only gotten worse sense then. Even Kunikida seemed to have gotten over whatever high it was that he's been feeling lately because of his partner actually doing his own work, even getting ahead on work, and realizing that something was wrong as Dazai got quite. As he got cold.
I was almost relived when the President called me into his office to speak with him, promptly ignoring the oohs from the other Agency members, sans Dazai and Kunikida, because at least I wouldn't have to see Dazai hurt anymore.
When I walked into the President's office, I was only slightly surprised to find that he wasn't alone in it. No one had seen Ranpo since he grabbed his morning sweet and disappeared from the main office and I hadn't been able to hear Yosano moving around in the infirmary either. It made perfect sense that they both would be here, but now it made that much less sense that I was being called.
"You wanted to see me, Mr. President?" I asked, my hand still firmly gripping the door knob so that I could flee at any given moment, a habit that I picked up when I was young and haven't quite been able to shake just yet.
"We wanted to speak with you about Dazai," Yosano said, speaking up as the other two in the room remained quite.
I looked between the three of them quickly before letting go of the door and bounding forwards in a way that I was sure that they all found childish and stupid but I didn't have the half a mind to care. "Is he okay?!" I asked hurriedly. "He's been acting stranger and stranger."
The three looked at him with sympathetic gazes, or at least Yosano did, Ranpo had his normal heavy lidded expression though it did look a little more down and the President looked as calm as ever, but his eyes looked a little more sad.
"No," Ranpo said simply, "no he's not. Which is why the President here wants to bring you back into this."
"Wha-?"
The three each gave me a run down of all of the things that they have learned over the past week and a half since Yosano and I had stayed to listen to the second song. None of them went into extreme detail, most likely trying to preserve some of the other detective's privacy where they could, as they each took their turn. What I did learn though was enough to know that Ranpo was, as always, right. Dazai wasn't okay and he was steadily getting worse.
I had wished once before that the other man would show something close to actual, genuine, emotion, but now that he was, it was almost like it was killing him.
"I'll stay for today," I offered once they were done. I felt bad for just passing off the problem as if I hadn't cared before, I needed to do something to make up for that now.
"Okay," the President agreed easily.
—-
3rd person switching POV
Atsushi walked out with all of the other members, feeling a familiar pang in the pit of his stomach as they all left Dazai behind to his own devices. He didn't want to leave him alone, not after growing up alone and knowing the sting of it and certainly not after everything that he had learned earlier, but the weretiger didn't have much choice in the matter as he had already volunteered to listen for the day.
Atsushi walked down the hallway a bit with Kyoka at his side before stopping and making a face like he had forgotten something. "Hey, I need to run back to the office real quick," he said, turning to the young girl, "do you want to go ahead down to the cafe and get us a table?"
The girl looked at him with a determined look and shook her head no in a way that told the older detective that there was no arguing with her on this.
"Okay," Atsushi said, a sigh escaping his lips, "but your going to have to keep quite and we're not actually going back into the office."
Kyoka shot the teen a confused look but understood as soon as they walked back towards the door.
"I am not the only traveler
Who has not repaid his debt
I've been searching for a trail to follow again
Take me back to the night we met"
Atsushi knew that this song was most likely about one of Dazai's friends from the mafia, the others had said that most of the songs lately had been about that as of late. The President had motioned that there had been two friends, one that had been a reason that he left the mafia and that he was angry with, and another that they didn't know anything about. Though he didn't think that it was about the friend that he was angry with, but the other one.
"And then I can tell myself
What the hell I'm supposed to do
And then I can tell myself
Not to ride along with you"
Dazai couldn't help the way that the words chocked at him as he forced them out. Odasaku had gone somewhere where he hadn't wanted Dazai to follow just yet. He was out of reach and all Dazai wanted was to have his friend back, to go back to the night that the two of them met when things were still easy. When he still had him. All Dazai wanted was follow the man where he had gone, and maybe soon he could.
"I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you"
Even as the memory of Odasaku fades and Dazai can't quite remember the other man's face, his ghost still remains. Every time that Dazai puts on his tan coat, he thinks of a shorter one that had been stained with blood. Every time that he speaks with Atsushi, he tries to think of how the man would have responded and act in such a way that would have made him proud. But as the time passed, he didn't know what he was supposed to do anymore.
Atsushi thought back to a memory that he had almost forgotten, to a grave with a name that he didn't know and a man in a tan coat sitting before it.
"Oh, take me back to the night we met
When the night was full of terrors
And your eyes were filled with tears
When you had not touched me yet
Oh, take me back to the night we met"
When Dazai was sixteen, he had been sent on a solo mission to retrieve some forged notes. During the process he had been shot, but had been able to get away with the notes. Back then, there had this house that was a designated peace zone, anyone that had tried to start any trouble with the man that lived there found themselves thrown out on their asses, though never anything close to dead. The rumors about the place had intrigued Dazai enough that when he got shot he didn't call for someone to retrieve him, or tried to make it back to headquarters before bleeding out, but had gone to the mystery house instead.
The man that lived in the house had been a mail man of all things that dealt with the more... dangerous deliveries. He'd taken Dazai into the house and nursed him and the child's three bullet wounds back to health even after knowing that the boy was a mafioso. He'd even gone as far as to stop the boy from trying to kill himself back then.
The mail man had been interesting and had caught Dazai's attention enough back then to keep him at the home even when he could have easily left on his own. He had been the only one that could beat the boy at cards before Dazai had found a way around that. Odasaku had been the one to first take him to the Lupin Bar.
Dazai had been the one to bring the man into the mafia, something that the man would never forgive himself for that after everything turned out the way that it did.
"I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don't know what I'm supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Take me back to the night we met"
If Dazai could go back to the night that met Odasaku, he would've changed it. He would have made it so that the man had never joined the mafia, so that the Mimic bastard never would have gotten his hands on him, and the Port Mafia boss would never had created that situation in the first place. He would've undone it all so that Odasaku might've lived, even if it meant without him.
Kyoka held onto Atsushi's sleeve as they walked down to the cafe downstairs, grabbing a booth in the corner away from the non Agency members that were eating their lunches there and would find their conversations weird... find their lives weird. Not that the girl didnt think that her own life was strange.
"When Dazai was still in the mafia," Kyoka started, getting the other detective's attention before he could get too lost in the menu and his own thoughts, "there was this man there that was said to have been the lowest Port Mafia member that they had because he was someone that refused to kill despite his own skills."
"What about him?" Atsushi asked, not sure how this connected to the singing man other than they had been there at the same time.
"It was before my time," the girl explained, "so I don't know much. But they say that the day that he died was the same day that Dazai left. The same night."
Once more, Atsushi's thoughts traveled back to the time in the graveyard before everything had gone to chaos. Back then Dazai had said that the man in the grave had been a friend of his, that he had been the reason that Dazai left the mafia and stopped killing. The detective had passed it off as a joke only a moment later, but now Atsushi wasn't so sure if it had been a joke at all. That had been real grief that he had heard in the man's voice back then, just as it had been real grief that he had heard only a minute or two before.
"Oh," Atsushi whispered. "Do you think they knew each other?"
The other detective shrugged unceremoniously. "They shouldn't have had any reason to with Dazai's rank in the mafia, but we both know that with him anything is possible."
"Yeah," Atsushi agreed.
'Even him leaving because of that man.'
Atsushi suddenly had an idea as to where Dazai was going after work the next day, and maybe even why he had left all together.
A/N: Any song suggestions can be left here.