And just like that, Dazai was gone. Without a single word, too. Chuuya wasn’t surprised, necessarily, because vanishing and reappearing randomly was an act the bandaged mackerel pulled often. After the week mark, though, Chuuya had an inkling that Dazai wasn’t coming back. He’d searched for a few days with no lead. His mackerel partner wouldn’t leave Yokohama. So the only other option was that Dazai was still in Yokohama, just at the bottom of the river or in some citizen’s dumpster.

Dazai was dead. And Chuuya… didn’t know how to feel, really. He didn’t have to deal with Dazai’s endless teasing and torment, but… it felt odd to function without that fishy piece of shit. Despite everything, Chuuya had become used to Dazai’s presence in his life — stuck to his shoe like a chewed-up wad of gum. Now, there was an odd emptiness; a sort of bland glaze over everything else. Chuuya was unchallenged. Bored.

… Lonely.

Chuuya scoffs against the rim of his glass. He tips his head back, swallowing the remaining substance in it then sets it down with a solid clink. A half-drowned bottle of Petrus 1889 sat near him on the breakfast bar table.

Chuuya’s eyes flicker across the apartment. At the cold hardwood floors. At the leather couch, imprinted with the shape of a familiar, lanky body from lying there so often. At the large windows and the pale moonlight that shined through them. At the single, warm hanging light above his head. He grabs the bottle of Petrus, refills his glass with a soft sigh.

Chuuya raises it up, giving a quiet toast to no one at all.

“Hope you found what you were looking for, you asshole,” Chuuya murmurs under his breath. The warm rush of sweet liquor washes down the bitterness in his throat. What exactly was it? Grief? Perhaps it was. Dazai was his partner, after all.

Years pass by. Chuuya Nakahara is a one-man show more than not, which is certainly a change. He defeats enemies. He takes down organizations in a matter of a week and a half. He wields his strength like the weapon of the Port Mafia that it was.

Four years of this. Life was ordinary and mostly quiet. There were times of warm joy and soft laughter with Ane-san. There were moments of awkward affection and fondness with his boy, Akutagawa. There was a simplicity to it all that Chuuya cherished.

But then that simplicity was complicated.

There was a man in the Port Mafia’s dungeons. Not the boy Chuuya once knew, but a man who vaguely resembled him. Osamu Dazai was alive and changed.

Chuuya would even go as far as to say happier. Despite the impossibility of it, the light looked surprisingly good and right on Dazai. Maybe Mori was wrong, and he was made for it.

Yet, even with all this change, they still worked well together. They bickered as though they hadn’t been apart for years. There was something… comforting about it.

Their mission — finding the culprit behind the bounty on Weretiger’s head — goes smoothly, but Chuuya does end up activating like Corruption. He wasn’t worried. He trusted Dazai’s craftiness (and just Dazai himself, but why would he admit that?)

“Make sure you take me back… to the base… safe… idiot…” Chuuya had managed to choke out to his old partner before passing out due to the strain Arahabaki put on him.

Before he lost complete consciousness, though, he heard Dazai’s reply.

“Leave it to me, partner.” The way the bastard spoke was strangely soft. Why the hell did he say partner like that?

When Chuuya awakens, his whole body hurts. But he was lying beneath something plush and more comfortable than the ground. His fingers brush cool leather. Ah, he was in the backseat of a car. Chuuya opens his eyes slowly and peers into the front.

Dazai was sitting in the driver’s seat.