Chuuya Nakahara’s mornings started before the sun even thought about rising. Not because he was some health nut or overly eager to face the day, but because the psych ward didn’t run on mercy—and neither did the damn bus schedule.

He'd meet Dazai at the stop near their apartments, both of them dressed in the same slightly-wrinkled scrubs and half-dead expressions. Their conversation during the ride was minimal: a grunt here, a sarcastic remark there, the occasional jab about who looked more like they hadn’t slept in a week. They didn’t need words. After nearly two decades of knowing each other, they moved in sync, from the bus ride to the break room to the hellscape they called work.

Chuuya was the head nurse at St. Léon’s Psychiatric Hospital, a place that looked peaceful enough from the outside—but anyone who worked there knew the truth. Between the open unit where patients wandered freely and the closed ward where things got violent fast, there was never a dull moment. And while Chuuya spent most of his time holed up in his office, buried under paperwork, scheduling nightmares, and reports no one but him bothered to read, he was always the first one on the floor when all hell broke loose.

That was his job. That was his responsibility.

Dazai, on the other hand, was more hands-on—literally. He was second-in-command, and while he technically had the same authority as Chuuya in emergencies, he preferred working directly with patients. Something about him calmed people down. Or maybe it was just that Dazai had this infuriating ability to say the exact wrong thing and somehow still make it work. He could talk a man out of a psychotic break and then spend the next five minutes asking Chuuya if they had pudding left in the staff fridge.

They made a good team, whether they wanted to admit it or not.

Dazai handled chaos like he was born in it—always calm, always smooth, always joking in that way that made everyone unsure whether they should laugh or call someone. Chuuya was the opposite: sharp, precise, firm. He knew how to get things under control fast. Knew how to talk so people listened. Knew how to stare down a doctor three times his age and make them feel like an intern again. And when the staff got lazy or overwhelmed—which happened more often than it should—it was Chuuya who picked up the slack and made sure everything didn’t fall apart.

Sometimes, it felt like they were running the whole place on caffeine, adrenaline, and mutual exhaustion.

Still, they kept showing up.

There was no glamour in their job. No applause. Just long shifts, screaming patients, broken systems, and moments of calm that never lasted long. But there were also quiet victories—when a patient remembered your name, when someone went a week without a meltdown, when someone got better, even just a little.

Chuuya wouldn’t trade it for anything.

And even if Dazai was an annoying bastard who flirted with half the staff, got too attached to certain patients, and never ever shut up—he was the one person Chuuya trusted more than anyone else. When things got dark, when the pressure got too heavy, when it felt like none of this made sense anymore—Dazai was there.

With tired eyes. With a stupid joke. With that look that said, Yeah, me too.

They were tired. They were overworked. And they were in this together.