Lunch hour had thinned the Armed Detective Agency down to an echo of itself, chairs empty, voices gone, sunlight spilling across the office like it didn’t know anything was wrong.

Dazai had stayed behind, stretched across the couch in practiced laziness, staring at the ceiling and wondering how long it would take for boredom to become unbearable, when a sound slipped into the room that didn’t belong there, small, uneven, wrong. He froze. It came again, a fragile cry that sounded like it might disappear if ignored long enough.

Dazai sat up, all humor draining from his posture and followed the sound toward the entrance. The door was closed, undisturbed, but just inside the office, placed with almost careful precision, sat a basket. Sunlight caught the edge of a neatly folded blanket, and inside it, impossibly small, was a baby.

For a long moment, Dazai didn’t move. His chest felt hollow, like something had already decided the outcome before he’d been informed. He knelt slowly and the baby stirred, face scrunching in confusion, a soft whimper slipping out as tiny fingers curled around nothing at all. He didn’t need proof. He already knew. Still, his hand shook as he reached beneath the blanket and found an envelope tucked there, clean and deliberate. No return address. Just his name. He stared at it, then at the baby again, the familiar line of the nose, the faint tension in the brow, resemblance etched far too early.

''You’ve got to be kidding me'', he murmured, without humor. He opened the letter.

''I never wanted this. That night was a mistake, nothing more. I won’t ruin my life pretending this is responsibility or fate. Don’t look for me. I won’t come back and I won’t explain myself again. As for the child, do whatever you want. Raise it, abandon it, lie to it if that helps you sleep. I'm done carrying the consequences of your recklessness. This was never my problem. Now it's yours.''*

The note slipped from Dazai's fingers and he saw red. He never wanted a baby ever and in his eyes this baby was a burden. He didn't know what he should do with that he ran not literally but he ran off to a bar to get a drink and the mind free. The baby stayed behind in the office alone