POV IS DAZAI!

Dazai had grown used to the quiet that lingered after a mission, the kind that clung to the Agency halls like smoke after a fire. But this silence was different. He glanced over his paperwork—not that he was reading any of it—and watched Atsushi from the corner of his eye.

The boy hadn’t said a word since stepping into the office. His shoulders were hunched, eyes locked on the floor, hands trembling faintly in his lap. He hadn’t even taken his coat off.

Dazai had seen this kind of grief before—raw, suffocating, buried under layers of guilt. Atsushi wore it too plainly, like bloodstains on white linen.

He waited, half-expecting Kunikida to break the tension with a lecture or for Ranpo to fill the air with some tactless joke. But no one moved. No one breathed. So Dazai rose.

He crossed the room slowly, the usual spring in his step replaced by something quieter. Something heavier. He crouched beside Atsushi’s chair, just out of reach, and spoke without the mask of cheer he wore so easily.

“You did everything you could, Atsushi.”