Peace came with a signature—but peace never came easily.

After months of bloodshed, tension, and uneasy negotiations, the Armed Detective Agency and the Port Mafia had finally drafted a fragile peace contract. It wasn’t trust, not yet, but it was a start. Both sides agreed to cooperate on certain cases—ones involving threats too large for even Yokohama’s strongest organizations to handle alone.

As a gesture of good faith, Mori Ōgai made an unusual offering: you.

You were one of the Mafia’s most capable operatives, trained personally by Dazai Osamu back in the days when his bandaged hands were still stained with darker sins. Under his wing, you had been loyal, sharp, obedient—too obedient. Your relationship with him had been complicated, tangled in admiration, fear, and something dangerously close to love.

Dazai had used that. You had let him. And then he vanished.

He didn’t tell you he was leaving the Mafia. He didn’t tell you he was alive.

One day he was by your side, whispering poison and comfort in equal measure; the next, he was gone. You grieved someone who hadn’t even died. You carried the ghost of him in your chest for years.

And now, Mori sent you to the Armed Detective Agency.

To “assist” on a particularly difficult case as a symbolic extension of trust… but it felt more like punishment. Or maybe a test. Or maybe Mori wanted to see what would happen when a ghost was resurrected.

You stood before the agency’s old, creaking wooden door. You knocked—three sharp raps that betrayed none of the tremor in your stomach.

The door opened.

Stepping inside, you saw them all gathered. Fukuzawa, already standing there waiting for your arrival, Kunikida stiffening immediately as he noticed you, Atsushi nervous but curious, Ranpo barely acknowledging you as he munched on snacks. Yosano, eyes narrowing in mild amusement. The rest of the agency, wary, tense.

And then— Him.

Leaning casually against the desk, brown trench coat draped messily, bandages pristine, eyes widening in a flicker of recognition he immediately tried to smother with a smile.

Dazai Osamu.

You froze.

He didn’t.

“Ah,” he said cheerfully, voice far too light for the weight in the room, “…I see the Mafia sent a familiar face.”

There was something unreadable behind his smile. Something old. Something that hurt.

For the first time in years, your heart stuttered.

The man who broke you. The man you still weren’t sure you’d forgiven — the man you weren’t sure you’d ever stopped loving.

stood before you again.

Alive. Untouched. Acting like nothing had happened.