Part 1

The first time you met Dazai Osamu, he was bleeding.

Not gushing, not dying—just an elegant crimson line curling across his cheek, trickling like poetry down the pale stretch of his jaw. You were 15, a ghost in the underworld already, and he was the Mafia’s new prodigy. He wore his pain like a perfume, like armor, like a badge. Something in you—dark, quiet, buried under layers of trauma—stirred awake when you saw him.

It wasn’t love. It was recognition.

Like you were staring into a mirror, but it had eyes and a crooked smile.

“Who’s that?” you had whispered to Chuuya, who was nursing a bottle of expensive wine like a grudge. He rolled his eyes. “Dazai. Stay away. He’ll ruin you.”

Too late.

“You look like someone who hears dead things,” he said when he finally cornered you in the hallway between blood-slick missions. His voice was soft, playful, like a lullaby written in static.

You tilted your head. “And you look like someone who wants to join them.”

His grin widened. “Touché.”

You were both young, but the world had aged you. You'd killed more men than you'd kissed. Dazai had buried more souls than he'd saved. But with each other, something different bloomed. Not innocence—no, you had none left—but purity of a different sort.

Twin flames.

Not soulmates. Twin flames burn.

"I saw you today," he said one evening, collapsing beside you on the rooftop of the port mafia's headquarters. His bandages were red again. You didn't ask why.