Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They brought him back like they always did—arms too thin beneath the sleeves of his white shirt, wrists unmarked but twitching faintly, and eyes half-lidded as if reality itself had lost flavor.

Room 16. His room. The nurses didn’t even need to check the clipboard this time. By now, the familiarity of it all bordered on ritual.

“Welcome back, Dostoevsky,” one of them said, like it was funny. He didn’t reply, they always assumed silence meant compliance, or brooding, or progress. How quaint.

Once alone, he sat on the edge of the edge of his bed, thin mattress, no sharp corners, no sheets that could be twisted into nooses. This was his fourth stay. Every precaution had already been exhausted on him.

Fyodor folded his hands and tilted his head back until it rested against the wall, dark hair sticking slightly to the paint. He stared at the ceiling for a while, expression still. Thoughtless, almost. But the gears were turning. 

They’re all so boring.

He memorized every tick, every twitch, every stare. The patients here were simple, predictable. A parade of sob stories and fragile egos, all parading their trauma like it gave them depth. He'd picked them apart like threads from a fraying tapestry—nothing new left to unravel.

And yet they still called this recovery. Still thought placing him in this sterile, padded box would somehow sand down the edges of his mind.

Recovery. He almost laughed.

Days passed like fog through windowless halls. The food was tasteless. The therapy sessions were the same as they've always been in the past years. Same questions, same answers. He spoke when he had to, lied when it amused him, and remained silent when it didn’t.

He’d already cracked the nurse who pretended not to be scared of him. Knew which doctor was cheating on their spouse. He'd even memorized how long it took for the antipsychotics to kick in for the patient in room eleven. Predictability was its own kind of madness.

He spent hours sitting cross-legged on his bed, thin fingers tapping idle rhythms against his knees. He thought in full monologues. He conversed only with himself.

On the fourth day, just as he was beginning to mentally list which of the new staff members would be the quickest to snap, he heard voices outside his door.

Two nurses. He didn’t know their names, didn't even care about it.

“He’s coming tomorrow,” one whispered.

“...Another suicide case?”

“Yeah. Bad one. They had to stabilize him first. Young guy. Attempted many times already, apparently.”

Fyodor didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just turned his head slightly toward the door, letting the voices trail off. A smirk began to pull at the corner of his mouth.

Young guy. Attempted suicide. Coming here tomorrow.

Someone new. Someone who hadn’t walked these halls. Someone whose mind he didn’t already own.

The corners of his lips twitched. Just slightly. That was going to be interesting for sure, hopefully for more than an hour without losing its meaning shortly after.

═════

Morning light crept into Room 16 in thin, reluctant strips. Fyodor had been awake for hours, of course. He didn’t sleep much. Not because he couldn’t, he simply didn’t care to.

He sat in the chair by the window, legs folded beneath him, cheek resting against knuckles. From this angle, he could see the courtyard below. Empty, for now. The world always looked more dull through reinforced glass.

And then he saw an ambulance park near the entrance. Two nurses came out. A doctor. And between them a young man.

Slender, tall, pale, bandages peeking out from under the sleeves of a too-large sweater, on his neck too.

He watched as they disappeared into the entrance, supposing they were going to give him a tour before assigning him a room.

“He’s here,” one of the nurses said, after some time, outside of his door. Fyodor didn’t move. His fingers curled around the fabric of his sleeve.

“How bad’s the intake?” asked another.

“Mm. Not as bad as they expected. He’s alert, but not talking much. Refused to give us a name at first. It’s in the file though—Dazai Osamu, twenty years old, tried to throw himself in front of a train. Third attempt this month.”

There was a short silence, then a concerned sigh. “He’s so young...”

Fyodor’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

Dazai Osamu. It was the kind of name you didn’t forget.

It wasn’t the method that interested him—suicide attempts were as common in this place as sedatives. It wasn’t even the silence, the refusal to speak. What caught Fyodor’s attention was something subtler: the tone of the nurses. Hesitant. Pitying. The kind of softness they reserved for things they either didn’t understand or feared.

After some time, there was a knock at the door, quiet and polite, Fyodor didn’t respond and the door opened anyway, it always did, it didn't matter whether he replied or not.

Two nurses stepped in, one holding a file, the other guiding the new arrival with light pressure to the elbow. Dazai Osamu walked like someone still halfway in another world, his dark hair framing a face that looked far too amused for someone admitted for suicidal ideation.

Fyodor’s eyes met his, and something inside him stilled.

That smile. That emptiness. That performance.

This one was pretending too.

Dazai didn’t flinch under his gaze. Most did, eventually. He merely blinked once, slowly, then let his eyes wander around the room. Fyodor watched him, unmoving, head slightly tilted, like he was observing a new species introduced to an ecosystem he thought was sterile.

"This is your roommate for now," one nurse said. "Room Sixteen's one of the larger ones, and we’re low on singles. You’ll both have space."

Dazai nodded. He moved further into the room, it was clear he didn’t really care where he was being placed, didn't care about having lots of space.

"Let us know if either of you needs anything," the other nurse added, too bright, too polite, it was obviously fake. Then they were gone. The door clicked softly behind them. Fyodor remained in his chair, watching as Dazai looked around slowly, his gaze moving over the walls, the bed opposite Fyodor’s, the chair, the floor. When he looked back at his roommate, his expression hadn't changed: neutral, faintly amused.

"You must be the welcoming committee," he said, dropping his duffel bag on the bed without ceremony. Fyodor tilted his head a fraction. “And you must be the entertainment.”

Dazai smiled again, this one was thinner. “Depends on the audience.” He sat down, back straight, hands resting on his thighs. Not slouched like most of them. Not twitchy. Too still.

Fyodor watched him through the corner of his eye, leaning back into the chair by the window like he hadn’t already taken apart the entire conversation in his head.

Dazai glanced at the door. “How’s the food?”

“Awful quality,” Fyodor murmured.

“I figured.”

Silence settled again. They didn't really feel any need to speak, Fyodor could hear it in Dazai’s voice, the cadence of someone who knew how to manipulate conversation without investing in it. Someone who shaped his words to provoke response while remaining untouched. Someone who knew what pretending looked like because he did it constantly.

He was like Fyodor.

No. Maybe not like him. Adjacent.

Parallel lines never touch, but they travel forever together.

That should have irritated him. Should have pushed him into another monologue about tedium and imitation. But instead, Fyodor sat forward, elbows on knees, eyes fixed on the brunette.

“You don’t snore, do you?” Dazai asked after a moment, toeing off his shoes, stretching out on the thin mattress like it was a hotel bed.

“I don’t sleep,” Fyodor said.

“Even better.”

“Did you come here for the ambiance?” Dazai asked, gesturing lazily at the walls. 

Fyodor didn’t answer immediately, either way, he knew the reason between these stupid, pointless questions. The walls were pale green now, not the grey they used to be during his second stay. He wondered if that was supposed to help. Make the mind feel soothed, contained, give some color to something that didn't have it.

“No,” he said finally. “I came because they insisted.”

“Ah,” Dazai replied, tone too light. “A man of conviction.”

“You came because you failed,” Fyodor said, his gaze flat. “And they called it survival.”

Dazai’s smile didn’t falter. “We all fail at something eventually.” He wasn't surprised by how Fyodor already knew the reason he was there, he knew how fast rumors flew in places like these.

The silence between them changed shape, the sound of footsteps outside passed by, faded. Somewhere a door clicked shut. Fyodor’s fingers drummed against the armrest. Dazai turned to face the ceiling again, arms folded beneath his head.

“I don’t like ceilings,” he said absently.

“No one here does, they make you feel like they're staring.”

Dazai snorted. “So philosophical. Are you going to tell me the meaning of life next?” 

“No. That would assume it has one.”

“Disappointing. You look like the type who’d try.”

Fyodor didn’t answer. He was too busy memorizing the exact curve of that smile, studying the way Dazai’s eyes drifted across the cracks in the ceiling paint, not quite focusing on anything. His mouth opened like he might speak again, then didn’t.

That restraint. That conscious choosing of silence. Fyodor knew it well. Wore it well. 

Dazai’s eyes had fluttered shut, lashes resting against his cheek, but he wasn’t asleep, Fyodor could tell. 

He leaned back into his chair again, fingers under his chin, eyes not moving from the silhouette on the bed. 

He’d said he was bored. That wasn’t true anymore.

Chapter Text

The overhead lights flickered on at exactly 7:00 AM. 

Fyodor was already sitting up when the door creaked open. He hadn’t moved all night. Bible in hand, thumb resting lightly against the corner of the page, not turning it. He wasn’t reading so much as staring through the words, letting them pass across his eyes like vapor.

“Morning,” the nurse said softly. She was one of the newer ones, judging by how she still bothered with pleasantries. She turned to the lump on the opposite bed. “Time to get up, Dazai-san.”

Fyodor didn’t shift, but his sharp gaze moved to the bed across from his.

Dazai stirred. Barely. One hand rose to his face, fingers dragging down slowly, before he cracked an eye open toward the voice.

“Already? I thought I was dead.”

“Not today,” she replied, faintly amused, and left without waiting for him to sit up.

Dazai sat up slowly, his eyes scanning the room like it might have changed overnight. It hadn’t. Fyodor hadn’t said anything yet, but Dazai turned toward him anyway. “Sleep well, roommate?”

Fyodor raised an eyebrow. “I told you. I don’t sleep.”

“Right.” Dazai stretched, joints popping. “You should consider a more cheerful book,” he said, nodding at the Bible.

“You didn’t eat yesterday,” Fyodor said, ignoring the comment about his choice in books, his tone was casual.

“Didn’t feel like it.”

Fyodor mirrored the faintest hint of a smile. “You’ll find that’s a common sentiment around here.”

Dazai made a sound, not quite laughter, but close enough to pass for it. “I wasn’t expecting gourmet.”

He stood, shrugging his oversized sweater into place, and stepped into his shoes with minimal effort, like this routine was already muscle memory.

Fyodor watched as he adjusted the hem of his sleeve, eyes darting to the bandage peeking from under it. He noted how Dazai’s fingers lingered just a second too long at his wrist, like confirming the bandages were still tight enough. Or maybe like he needed to feel the pressure.

People like that didn’t come here to be saved. They came here because someone else decided they should be. That made Dazai different from most of the wounded creatures in this place, Fyodor could tell, he had no illusions of healing. He was lucid. Completely aware that, for people like him, places like these were a waste of time.

Fyodor liked that.

Dazai looked over his shoulder. “You coming?”

Fyodor turned a page. “No.”

“Figured.”

The brunette didn’t ask why. He wasn't really interested in anyone’s reasons, not yet, anyway. He pulled on his shoes in a slow, habitual motion, then padded to the door, pausing just long enough to glance back at the other man, then he left.

Fyodor’s eyes followed him until the door clicked shut. He sat still for a moment longer.

Dazai’s footsteps echoed briefly in the hallway before fading. Fyodor stared at the closed door, hands loosely cradling the open Bible in his lap.

The ritual of breakfast would begin soon. The nurses would smile their most professional smiles. Patients would file into the cafeteria with the dull shuffle of medicated limbs. Most would speak too softly or too loudly, unsure of the social volume allowed here. But Dazai, he’d already figured out the tempo. He’d mirror it, or distort it, depending on how bored he felt.

Fyodor didn’t need to see it happen in front of him to know.

He pressed his thumb against the paper of the Bible until it bent slightly.

Three suicide attempts in one month, and the month wasn't even over yet. Someone like that wasn’t trying to be saved. He was testing how much of himself he could kill before the body followed.

He closed the Bible.

Not because he was done reading, he just had something new to study.

═════

The cafeteria smelled like bleach. Dazai moved through the line with the rest of the patients, hands in his pockets, looking unfocused.

A tray was shoved at him by someone who didn’t look up, and he took it without a word.

Pale scrambled eggs. Toast that tasted like cardboard. Something that might’ve once been oatmeal, now reduced to beige slush.

He sat alone at the end of a long plastic table, placed his elbows on the surface, with his chin in one hand. The other patients talked around him, about nothing—what time meds were, who got a new roommate, what they dreamt last night. Dazai didn’t listen, he picked at the toast and bit once, chewing without tasting it.

He ate just enough to keep from drawing attention. He didn't particularly care about the food, always ate the bare minimum, as his body lacked the feeling of hunger most of the times.

His eyes wandered. There was a boy two tables down biting his nails, looking quite scared. Another table, a woman humming tunelessly between mouthfuls. Someone else was staring at the exit door, probably hoping to be out soon, or maybe planning a way to get out. 

Everyone here had that same fog in their eyes. Except him. 

And maybe Fyodor.

He wondered if Fyodor ever ate. He didn't ask him to bring food. Didn’t follow him here.

Dazai looked down at the mush on his plate, he poked it once with the back of his spoon, then he stood. 

Room 16 was the same when he returned. Fyodor hadn’t moved much, he was still cross-legged on the bed, still holding the Bible, though it was closed now, thumb resting on the spine.

Dazai dropped onto his own mattress with a soft grunt, exhaling long and flat. “You weren’t missing much,” he said, without being asked. “Though the eggs had… personality.”

Fyodor looked over, faintly amused. “Sentient?”

“I don't know. Threatening, for sure."

A pause. Fyodor watched as Dazai leaned back on his hands, gazing at the ceiling. He looked absolutely drained, the kind that didn't go away with sleeping, that made resting feel like a task instead of something pleasant. Fyodor liked that too.

The brunette turned his face towards him, glancing at the Bible before smirking slightly. “You always read the same book?” his voice broke the silence again, casual.

“It’s the only one worth rereading.”

Fyodor could have sworn he heard the other man almost laugh.

“That’s a bold statement,” Dazai said, turning his head towards the white ceiling again. "You didn't strike me as someone who believes in God."

Fyodor’s lips twitched in a slight smile. “Faith isn’t about belief,” he said softly, voice calm, measured. It’s about necessity. A means to an end.”

Dazai turned his head slowly, eyes narrowing in interest. “Necessity?” He propped himself on one elbow, facing Fyodor now. “Sounds more like survival than salvation.”

The other man folded his hands neatly in his lap, thumb tracing the edge of the Bible’s spine. “Survival is an illusion. God is the architecture behind all the chaos, the only constant I can trust. He knows all the chaos is necessary for something greater.”

The room fell into a silence, broken only by the distant clatter of low murmurs from the hall. Dazai’s eyes searched Fyodor’s face, as if weighing those words against something only he could see. Then, almost reluctantly, he broke the gaze and replied sarcastically. “Sounds lovely.”

Dazai then let out a low chuckle, shaking his head. “You know, I envy you. Or maybe pity you. Holding on to that kind of certainty in a place like this... it’s either brave or delusional.”

Fyodor’s eyes didn’t waver. “I’m neither. I’m simply resigned to the truth that nothing else has offered me.”

The brunette's smirk softened, just a little. “Truth is subjective, Fyodor."

The other man tilted his head, intrigued despite himself. “And what version of truth do you cling to, Dazai Osamu?”

Dazai’s smirk deepened, his eyes gleaming with that familiar mischievous light. “Ah, you caught me. Truth, huh? Well... I’m more of a ‘whatever gets me through the day' kind of guy. Not that deep."

“A convenient philosophy.”

Dazai shrugged, clearly enjoying the game. “Convenience is key.”

He rolled onto his side, propping his head up with one hand, eyes locked on the ceiling. “Besides, if I had a definitive truth, I’d probably be boring. Can't lose my charm.”

Just then, the door creaked open again. A nurse peeked in, clipboard in hand. “Time for your first psychiatric examination, Dazai-san.”

Dazai gave Fyodor a last sideways glance, a sardonic grin tugging at his lips. “Have fun with your Bible, Fyodor." Said that, he stood up and followed the nurse outside, door clicking shut behind them.

═════

Dazai walked beside the nurse without speaking, hands in his pockets, eyes drifting over the off-white walls like they were already boring him.

He was led into a small room. Two chairs. A desk. A file that had clearly been opened already. The psychiatrist sat behind the desk, glasses low on his nose, greying at the temples, wearing a name badge Dazai didn’t bother reading.

In the corner, near the wall, a woman sat quietly with a notepad. She didn’t introduce herself. Didn’t even look up at first.

“Please, sit.” The man said, with a soft, gentle tone that was obviously fake.

Dazai slouched into the chair with the kind of theatrical ease that made it clear he was doing the psychiatrist a favor by complying. He crossed one leg over the other and rested his hands on his knee, his whole body language loose, lazy on purpose.

The psychiatrist leaned forward, folding his hands. “This will be a preliminary session. Just a few questions.”

Dazai smiled politely. “Of course, doctor. I’m an open book.”

The doctor didn’t smile back. He opened the folder and glanced at it. “You’ve been hospitalized three times in the past month. Attempted overdose, wrist laceration, and… last time you attempted jumping on the train tracks while high on medication. Do you remember that?”

Dazai’s smile didn’t falter, but the gleam in his eyes dimmed a fraction, subtle enough to be missed by anyone not looking for it.

“Vaguely,” he replied, voice light. “I remember the train was late. Annoying, really. All that effort, and I couldn’t even be on time for my own ending.”

The psychiatrist didn’t react. He made a note. His voice, when he spoke again, was level. “Do you still want to die?”

Dazai tilted his head. “I think about it sometimes. The food here will definitely be the cause of that thought.”

The man looked up. “That’s your answer?"

“It’s the one you’re getting,” Dazai replied smoothly. “I could say yes, or no, but either way you’d write down the same thing. ‘Patient evasive, deflects with humor.’ Isn’t that right?”

The woman in the corner finally looked up. Her pen paused mid-word. The psychiatrist didn’t acknowledge the comment, only turned the page in the folder.

“Why do you think you’re here?”

Dazai stretched his arms over his head, spine arching slightly, then let them fall. “Because someone got tired of finding me passed out in public places. Because bleeding out is bad. Because the law says I’m supposed to be rehabilitated.”

The psychiatrist studied him, then asked, “Do you want to be rehabilitated?”

A silence stretched between them, Dazai leaned back again, crossing his arms.

“No,” he said simply.

Another note was made. The psychiatrist’s pen moved carefully. “Do you sleep?”

“When I want to.”

“Nightmares?”

Dazai grinned. “You tell me.”

More silence.

“Do you hear voices?”

“Just yours, right now. Is that a symptom?”

The psychologist looked up again, this time more slowly. Her expression remained unreadable.

The psychiatrist adjusted his glasses. “Any violent tendencies?”

Dazai shrugged. “Not really.”

“Self-harm urges?”

“Not urges,” Dazai said after a beat. “Habits. There’s a difference.”

The pen stopped. The man looked at him for a long moment, then shifted his gaze to the woman in the corner. She gave the smallest of nods, then returned to her notes.

“Let’s try something else,” the psychiatrist said, his voice still neutral. “Do you think anyone would care if you died?”

Dazai’s expression didn’t change, then, after a pause, he smiled again, soft, bitter. “Probably. But not for long.”

The psychiatrist looked back down. “Family?”

Dazai didn’t answer.

“Friends?”

“Some people call themselves that.”

“Anyone visiting you here?”

“God, I hope not.”

He sounded almost sincere.

The psychiatrist tapped his pen once against the desk, then wrote something else. “You don’t trust people.”

“Think so?”

The man didn’t rise to the bait. He just sat there, scribbling in slow, measured lines, like this exchange was unfolding exactly as he expected it to.

The clock ticked once. Dazai watched it.

“Do you ever feel anything intensely?” the doctor asked.

Dazai tilted his head, amused. “Define ‘intensely.’ I feel annoyed when someone forgets my coffee order. Is that what you mean?”

“No,” the psychiatrist said.

“Then probably not.”

The woman in the corner made another note. The psychiatrist laced his fingers together again. “Any attachments?”

Dazai exhaled, slow and theatrical. “To what? People? Places? Objects? I had a plant once, if that helps.”

“And what happened to it?”

“I forgot to water it.” His voice didn’t waver. “It died. I felt... predictably unsurprised.”

The psychiatrist didn’t comment, he moved on to the next question. “Have you ever been in love?”

“You’re getting romantic on me, doctor. Should I be flattered?”

Truth was, Dazai has never truly been in love. He doubted he even cared about most of the women and the men he slept with, if not all of them.

He was like that, couldn't keep relationships for long, broke hearts, he knew it. But he couldn't bring himself to feel something about it.

The psychiatrist leaned back in his chair. “I’m going to recommend that we continue these sessions bi-weekly.”

Dazai clapped, once, dryly. “Can’t wait.”

“I’ll also recommend a medication adjustment.”

"Aw, such a shame, didn't think it was that big of a deal,"

The doctor stood. The woman followed suit, collecting her notes without comment. Neither said goodbye. The door opened, and a nurse was waiting for Dazai to get out to escort him back to his room.

As he stepped into the hallway again, Dazai’s face was mildly amused. He didn’t speak on the walk back, the nurse didn’t either.

When he reentered Room 16, Fyodor was still in his same place, unmoved, only difference the Bible wasn't on his lap anymore, it was now placed on his bedside table, next to the small lamp.

“Back already?” Fyodor murmured without looking up.

“Apparently they can't resist my charm,” Dazai replied, flopping face-first onto his mattress, he turned his head to the side, watching Fyodor through a curtain of hair. “They asked if I’d ever been in love.”

“Have you?”

Dazai stared at the wall behind Fyodor for a long second. "No, not really."

Silence settled again, briefly. The overhead lights buzzed. Somewhere down the hallway, someone was yelling, indistinct words, angry. Neither of them flinched.

Dazai shifted, flipping to lie on his back, one arm draped over his stomach. “What’s your diagnosis, anyway?”

Fyodor glanced at him, his gaze was unreadable. “You first.”

Dazai grinned. “Fair enough. Let’s play guesswork instead.”

“You look like a sociopath.”

“Flattering.”

“With self-destructive tendencies. Possibly borderline. Definitely something antisocial layered underneath, but hard to tell.”

Dazai laughed softly. “Wow. You really know how to sweet-talk a guy.”

Fyodor’s lips twitched. “Your turn.”

Dazai eyed him for a beat. “Mmm… control issues. Definitely. Perfectionist. You have that whole ‘cold psychopath’ vibe, which is kind of fun. Probably high-functioning, but a nightmare behind closed doors.”

Fyodor smiled faintly. “You’re very imaginative.”

“It's just my charm.” 

Chapter Text

The hallway hummed low with fluorescent light, pale and sickly against the muted green of the walls. Doors creaked open one after another as the nurses made their rounds, dispensing pills and platitudes in equal measure. It was a ritual. Soothing to some. Suffocating to others.

Dazai sat on the edge of his bed, fingers laced, back hunched. He could hear the sounds coming from the hallway. Doors opening. Doors closing. Muffled greetings. Other patients sighing.

His stomach felt lined with lead. That day’s dinner had been tolerable: some bland fish, steamed rice, a slice of orange—but the taste had dissolved as soon as he swallowed. He hadn’t spoken to anyone. No one had tried, and he liked it better that way.

Fyodor hadn’t eaten in the cafeteria, but he had dinner that evening. Dazai thought of the way the other man had carried his tray earlier, thin wrists steady, the politeness in his voice when he said “I’ll take it in the room.” Like he was a guest. Like this place was a hotel and not a cage. But no one stopped him. No one even dared to look at him in disagreement.

A soft knock, then the door opened.

“Dazai-san?” The nurse’s voice was soft and practiced. As if softness could make anything in this place less cruel. She held a little paper cup with a single white pill. She didn’t meet his eyes when she said, “Your medication for the night, you’ll sleep better with this.” It wasn’t a suggestion, even if the words were gently pronounced to make it sound like one.

Dazai’s eyes dropped to it. He didn’t need to ask.

That was Zolpidem.

He had memorized this shape, this weight, the bitter taste. It was the same kind he had swallowed in twenties, thirties, fifties.

Three times he had woken up anyway. Once in a hospital bed, once on a bathtub floor, once with his own vomit burning his throat raw.

He took the cup, tilted it to his lips, and swallowed, obedient. Then he smiled at the nurse, who gently smiled back and nodded, making the silly mistake of trusting him enough not to check his tongue.

The door clicked shut again. Her steps faded into the hallway, swallowed by the steady shuffle of the night shift. Dazai didn’t move for a few seconds. The pill sat under his tongue like a splinter.

His body remembered the taste.

The first time he had swallowed dozens of those pills, he had left a note. He had still been a teen at the time, barely fourteen. His mother had been worried because he didn’t function the way she expected a normal fourteen-year-old to function. She had taken him to a doctor. The doctor had prescribed him Zolpidem, hadn’t even heard what his younger self had to say. Not that he would have spoken at all. The man had just listened to what his mother said. “The kid doesn’t sleep at night, this will help,” had been his conclusion.

Not even a week after the prescription, Dazai Osamu had swallowed twenty Zolpidem pills, making that his first suicide attempt. He had woken up at the hospital. His mother had thrown away the rest of the pills.

“You’re going to let it dissolve?” The voice cut clean through the memory. Calm, low, vaguely amused.

Dazai didn’t look up right away. The pill still stung under his tongue, the bitterness leaking into his saliva like a secret refusing to stay buried. His eyes flicked toward the other bed—Fyodor’s bed. The man was lying down, back against the pillows, legs stretched out neatly over the white sheets, long fingers resting over a worn book, surprisingly not the Bible, that he clearly wasn’t reading.

“Spit it out,” he said.

Dazai considered playing dumb. Shrugging. Saying, Spit what out?, like some dumb rebellious teen caught smoking behind a school building.

But he didn’t. Instead, he lowered his head and let the pill slide out from under his tongue, catching it between two fingers like it was something dirty. He placed it on the nightstand beside his bed, not looking at it again.

Fyodor didn’t blink.

“You don’t move your throat when you pretend to swallow. It’s... very subtle.” There was something disturbingly tender in the way he said it. Like he had been studying Dazai’s every move, cataloguing his tells the way a collector memorized the brushstrokes on a painting. Analyzing him the same way philosophers analyzed each other’s theories.

Dazai let out a short breath, almost a laugh. “You’ve been watching me that closely?” He tossed the cup onto the nightstand. “Maybe I just like the taste.”

Fyodor’s mouth twitched into a faint smile. “Don’t lie to me. You hate it. You knew what it was the second she walked in.”

Dazai nodded once, slowly, his expression remaining the same. “Zolpidem.”

 “You weren’t prescribed it for insomnia. Not really.” Fyodor smiled at him, he closed the book and put it on his bedside table, right next to the Bible. “You were given it to keep you quiet.”

Dazai hummed, low in his throat, a noncommittal sound. He leaned back against the wall, the mattress springs creaking faintly beneath him. His eyes drift to the ceiling, to the thin crack running like a vein through the plaster.

"Quiet," he echoed, as if tasting the word. "That’s the goal of places like these, isn’t it? A ward full of quiet, manageable bodies. Easier to forget we’re people that way."

Fyodor shifted slightly, crossing one ankle over the other. “You think they see you as a person?”

The brunette turned his head then, eyes narrowing. “No. But they’re polite about pretending. Which is worse.”

A beat. Fyodor’s gaze remained fixed on him, head tilted just enough to look curious. Not concerned—never that—but focused. Like Dazai was a puzzle with missing pieces he planned to carve himself. “You were born with rot in your lungs, Dazai Osamu. I can hear it every time you breathe.”

Dazai stared at him, then huffed a quiet laugh. “Do you always flirt like this?”

Fyodor’s smile didn’t deepen. “I don't flirt.”

The other looked away again, obviously not out of shyness. He studied the ceiling crack like it might split open and swallow him whole. That would’ve been easier than figuring out whatever this was—this slow, sharp dance with a man who saw through him like glass but never seemed to mind the cracks.

Fyodor found him endlessly fascinating, like nothing he had ever laid eyes on before. In Dazai, Fyodor saw a creature who had long since given up on redemption but continued to perform the gestures of a man pretending to seek it. He recognized the performance because he did it too. They were mirrors, warped differently but reflecting the same sickness.

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. The hallway sounds grew more distant. The facility quieted like a beast settling into sleep.

Then Fyodor reached for the lamp beside his bed and clicked it off. Darkness spilled into the room, deep and untouched except for the faint, rhythmic flash of red from the exit sign outside their door.

Dazai heard the rustle of sheets as Fyodor shifted under his blanket.

“You should sleep,” the Russian murmured.

Dazai lay down, slowly, the taste of the unswallowed pill was still bitter at the back of his tongue. “I don’t sleep,” he said, echoing Fyodor’s words from the night before.

There was a beat. Then, Fyodor’s voice, quiet in the dark: “Of course.”

And with that, they let silence take them both.

═════

The next morning, Dazai’s eyelids fluttered open, dry and heavy. His body felt heavier still—sunken into the thin mattress, limbs dulled, mind not yet caught up to the fact of waking.

He hadn’t meant to fall asleep.

For a moment, he didn’t move, his breath came slow. Then he felt it, the quiet pull of eyes on him.

Dazai turned his head, just slightly. Fyodor was sitting up in bed, spine straight, sheets still folded neatly around his waist. He looked like he hadn’t moved once during the night. His pale fingers rested on the edge of the Bible again, just like the day before, but his eyes weren’t on the pages. They were on Dazai.

“Good morning,” Fyodor said softly. There was no smugness in his tone, it was completely neutral. “You did sleep.”

The brunette pushed himself up with a soft groan, elbows trembling faintly under his weight. His body resisted the movement like it wanted to stay down, like sleep had clung too tightly to his bones. “Did you watch me all night?” He asked, scrubbing at his face with one hand.

Fyodor’s eyes narrowed slightly in thought. “No,” he said. “Just until you stopped twitching.”

“Twitching?”

“You move in your sleep. Like you’re trying to leave your own body. It stopped around four-thirty.”

Dazai exhaled through his nose. “You keep time well.”

“Time matters here,” Fyodor replied. “It’s the only thing they can’t medicate out of you.”

They sat like that for a moment, the stale morning pressing in from all sides. Somewhere down the hall, the rustle of carts began. The morning rounds. Soon, the nurses would come with new pills and new platitudes, telling everyone to get ready for breakfast.

While waiting, Dazai picked at a loose thread in the hem of his sleeve, fingers working it back and forth without looking. “Why didn’t you call the nurse? When I didn’t take it.”

Fyodor’s reply was immediate. “Because I don't care, you should know by now.” He sounded almost bored, but the truth cut beneath it.

Dazai hummed low, staring at the loose thread. Fyodor truly was a hypocrite, at least that's what someone else would have thought. The man claimed to not care, yet he watched him at night and memorized his gestures and moves, just like last night, he noticed Dazai didn't swallow the pill.

Dazai knew Fyodor wasn't just a man trying to sound edgy while falling into hypocrisy, what he said made sense, in a way. 

He didn’t answer right away. There was nothing to say, really. Fyodor hadn’t called the nurse, hadn’t pressed him to swallow, hadn’t played the role of a concerned roommate. He had just watched. Dazai wasn’t sure if that was more or less disturbing. But maybe he didn't care either.

Dazai let his head tip back, exhaling through his nose. “You’re a creep.”

Fyodor smiled slightly. “You prefer your voyeurs less articulate?”

The other snorted. It was the closest thing to a real laugh he’d made in days. As he heard the nurse's steps getting closer to room 16, and the door before theirs crack open, Dazai sighed and grabbed the pill that was left on the nightstand the whole night, just to hide it beneath the pillow. Fyodor tilted his head, watching the other in amusement.

A knock on the door broke whatever silence was beginning to form again. Sharp and brisk, different from the night nurse’s rhythm. Then the door opened.

The nurse stepped in, her presence as clinical and forgettable as the sterile scent that clung to the hallway. Her uniform was perfectly pressed, her shoes silent against the floor. She didn’t smile, didn’t speak right away. Her eyes flicked briefly to Fyodor, then settled on Dazai. No pill cup in hand. No meds. That confirmed it—they weren’t trying anything else, at least not for now. Whatever drugs they had planned for him, they were taking it slow. The only thing she had in her hands was a folded sheet of paper.

“Good morning,” she said. She didn’t wait for an answer before continuing, placing the paper on the small table between the two beds. “Here’s the monthly program. Activities, groups, therapy times, notes about visitation. Breakfast is in ten minutes. Be ready.” He gave a nod. That was enough for her. She turned on her heel and walked out, shutting the door with a soft, final click.

Dazai's eyes dropped to the paper. Neatly folded, printed in monochrome, the columns organized with disturbing precision. Someone had put real effort into this. Every date, every hour, mapped out like a battle plan for a war no one had signed up to fight. Group therapy three times a week. Individual meetings with a psychiatrist. Mindfulness sessions. Movie nights. Art hour. The names of the doctors and facilitators were listed too, as if that somehow made it feel more personal.

YOKOHAMA PSYCHIATRIC CENTER — MONTHLY PATIENT PROGRAM.

March Program - Ward C: Group A.

GROUP THERAPIES (Compulsory attendance: 1/week) (Room 5D)

• Monday, 9:00 – 10:00 AM — Emotional Processing

• Wednesday, 3:00 – 4:00 PM — Trauma-Centered Cognitive Discussion

• Friday, 10:30 – 11:30 AM — Social Reintegration Roleplay

INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS (Assigned by caseworker)

• Scheduled directly with your attending psychiatrist.

• Duration: 45 minutes. Check room assignments on board.

ACTIVITY BLOCKS (Choose at least 1/week)

• Tuesday, 2:00 – 3:30 PM — Creative Writing (Room 7B)

• Thursday, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM — Painting and Mixed Media

• Saturday, 1:00 – 2:30 PM — Gardening Therapy (Courtyard East)

EVENING OPTIONALS (Free attendance)

• Monday & Thursday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM — Movie Screening

• Sunday, 3:00 – 4:00 PM — Mindfulness & Breathing Techniques

• Friday, 7:30 PM — Poetry Reading (Rec Room)

“Participation in programming is essential to your progress. We thank you for your cooperation.”

He exhaled softly through his nose, he turned slightly, his eyes moving to Fyodor—still upright, still motionless, Bible on his lap, like a statue at rest. The sheet was placed equidistant between them, but Dazai knew it wasn’t meant for both. The nurse had looked at him. Spoken only to him.

And yet Fyodor had been here longer. That much Dazai had pieced together quickly enough. Fyodor had a rhythm to him, a routine, too rehearsed to be recent. He knew the hall timings, the nurse rotations. He moved around this place like it belonged to him—or like he belonged to it in a way Dazai didn’t yet.

So why hadn’t he received a program?

That didn’t sit right with Dazai. Fyodor wasn’t just another patient. The nurses avoided his eyes. The staff never asked him questions. He was given autonomy where no one else was, and that autonomy said something. 

Dazai glanced back at the paper, eyes narrowing slightly.

He suddenly realized how little he actually knew about the man in the bed across from him.

He knew the details of Fyodor’s movements, yes. The way he sat. The way he read. The exact pitch of his voice when amused. But he didn’t know why he was here. What he had done to be placed in this ward. Who had diagnosed him. What the paperwork said. If there even was paperwork. Whether his name was truly Fyodor Dostoevsky or some carefully chosen pseudonym.

He didn’t even know how long Fyodor had been here.

In contrast, Fyodor knew why Dazai was there. But Dazai didn’t have that same luxury. Fyodor had told him nothing. He never asked for Dazai’s story—but he had pieced it together. And Dazai had no pieces to work with in return. No handle. No leverage. 

He finally looked up again. “You’re not eating again today, are you?”

Fyodor shook his head once, slowly. “Not in the cafeteria, no.”

“Mhmm, of course not.” Dazai murmured, half to himself, amused. He stood, bones stiff from the mattress, and stretched his arms above his head until his joints popped.

Dazai dressed slowly, slipping into the standard clothes folded at the end of his bed.

═════

Dazai returned from breakfast with a hollow sort of rhythm in his step, neither quick nor slow. The door to Room 16 clicked open under his fingers. Inside, the air was still.

But something was different.

Fyodor wasn’t perched in his usual corner, nor cross-legged on his bed with the Bible balanced in his lap. Instead, he was seated at the small desk by the wall. 

For a moment, Dazai stood in the doorway, silently. It was the first time in three days he had seen Fyodor eat.

A tray sat at the edge of the desk, porcelain cup balanced carefully near the edge, steam rising from dark tea. The scent was delicate, lemon. Almost out of place in a place like this. On the tray were two small cookies—Fyodor had already eaten the rest.

His long fingers moved slowly as he lifted the cup to his lips, taking a sip, as though nothing about this moment was unusual. His posture was, as always, immaculate. Shoulders straight. Spine aligned. One hand resting palm-down beside the tray.

Dazai blinked slowly, then shut the door behind him. “You always drink lemon tea?” he asked, voice lighter than it felt.

Fyodor tilted his head, regarding him carefully. “Yes. Next time don’t come back right away. I like the silence.” It sounded like he meant that, but he secretly wanted Dazai in the room, and the other man knew that.

Dazai’s smile curved, sharply as he walked towards his bed, sitting at the edge, his body facing Fyodor's back. “Didn’t realize I was interrupting a date with yourself.”

The russian man didn’t turn his head. He simply picked up the teacup again, sipped once, and set it back down in silence. The faint clink of ceramic was the only reply for a moment.

Still, Fyodor’s hand drifted, almost lazily, toward the plate. He picked up one of the cookies, held it between his fingers, then set it down at the edge of the desk, closer to Dazai's bed.

The brunette didn’t reach for it immediately, but after a few seconds he rose slowly, the mattress sighing under him. He didn’t ask anything. He just walked over, picked up the cookie, and bit into it. “Such a pity, it's not poisoned.”

Fyodor sipped his tea. “If I wanted you dead, Dazai, I’d never use sugar.” His eyes were on the other man now—not passively, not curiously, but intensely, like reading a verse he couldn’t stop reciting in his head. Even the way this man chewed on the cookie was fascinating, in a strange way.

Dazai laughed, dry in the back of his throat. “That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s said to me in here.” He lingered near the desk instead of retreating back to his bed. He leaned forward, palms pressed to the edge of the wood, shoulders curling slightly as he tilted his head in a way that suggested indifference, but the other wasn’t fooled.

Fyodor didn’t answer. Instead, his fingers curled slowly around the teacup, lifting it again—but this time, he didn’t drink. His hand extended halfway across the desk, deliberate, fluid. He held the porcelain out, expecting something.

Dazai’s brow arched slightly, something unreadable behind his eyes, even he didn't know what was going through his own head. But he leaned in. Close enough that he could smell the faint citrus of the tea.

Fyodor’s hand didn’t waver.

Dazai held his gaze as he brought his lips to the cup’s rim and sipped, slowly.

Their eyes stayed locked.

The tea was tepid. Pleasant once, but now stripped of comfort.

Dazai’s tongue darted briefly along his bottom lip before he leaned back, the motion smooth, unbothered. “Cold,” he murmured.

Fyodor’s hand retracted, setting the cup down with a muted clink. “You noticed.”

Dazai returned to his bed with no further commentary, laying back with a soft exhale, fingers lacing behind his head as he stared at the ceiling.

Fyodor continued to look at him.

Long after there was any reason to.

═════

Group therapy took place in Room 5D—a wide, circular space that had once been an office, or a break room, or something else before it became a container for strangers confessing to other strangers.

Ten chairs. Two therapists. One fake potted plant in the corner that no one looked at. A circle, because corners make people defensive. They’d said that before starting, since it was Dazai's first group therapy session.

The brunette sat in one of the chairs near the edge of the circle, slouched lazily with one arm draped over the backrest, fingers curled into the cheap fabric. His eyes didn’t focus on anything in particular. He looked like a misplaced ornament—decorative, irrelevant, disinterested. But he was listening. He always was.

Across the circle, Fyodor sat with the same posture he had at the desk: regal, perfectly aligned, hands resting over his lap. It was the first time he’d shown up in that room in years. The therapists had looked at him when he entered—one wide-eyed, the other trying not to visibly shift in her seat. They didn’t ask him why he was there, they were actually trying to not look at him too much, as if ignoring him would make his presence disappear.

He didn’t even look at them.

He only looked at Dazai.

Not openly, not enough to draw attention. But constantly.

When Dazai leaned forward slightly to scratch the back of his neck, Fyodor’s gaze followed the arc of his arm. When the brunette exhaled through his nose, too quiet to register to anyone else, Fyodor catalogued the shift in breath. And when Dazai blinked slower than usual, his eyes briefly unfocused, Fyodor tilted his head the barest fraction, like he had just witnessed something sacred. 

It was devotion, the beginning of something incurable.

The circle had begun with the usual script.

“You don’t need to share anything today. This space is what you make of it.” The first therapist spoke. “Progress isn’t linear. Just being here is a start.” 

Someone nodded. Someone else picked at their sleeves. Dazai slouched deeper. Fyodor didn’t blink. 

Half the people in the room didn’t talk. The rest said small, aimless things.

A young man named Atsushi sat two chairs at Fyodor’s right. He was shaking slightly, in that way that suggested he was trying not to be shaking. Dazai had spotted him in the cafeteria before, the boy always sat alone, not daring to look up at other patients, visibly terrified of eye contact. His voice was soft when he finally spoke.

“I… I’ve been having trouble sleeping again,” he said. “Nightmares. It’s been worse this week, I guess. It’s—” he paused, glancing down at his hands. “It’s not always memories, sometimes it’s just… noise. Feelings. Like I’m drowning but there's no water.”

The second therapist leaned in slightly, her tone gentle. “That sounds overwhelming, Atsushi. Have you been able to do anything that helps?”

“I… I don’t know. Drawing used to help. Or writing. But lately I just feel like I’m doing it wrong. Like there’s a right way to be… recovering, and I’m not doing it right.”

Fyodor didn’t move. His face remained perfectly still, like someone listening to elevator music.

Because he wasn’t listening.

The moment Atsushi spoke, Fyodor’s eyes flicked briefly toward him, then right back to Dazai. He watched the shift in the brunette's expression. Not boredom. Not amusement. Something quieter. A twitch in his jaw, a blink held a fraction too long. Maybe the words drowning but no water meant something. Maybe they didn’t. But Fyodor saw it. And he wanted to know.

He didn’t care if Atsushi had been beaten or abandoned or locked in basements. He wanted to know why Dazai’s fingers had curled the way they did when that boy said the word wrong.

The therapist kept talking. Something about breathing exercises. Something about safe spaces.

Dazai didn’t speak during the session, and no one pressured him. The facilitators tried to coax words from others, asking the room to reflect, to connect. But Fyodor only observed, silent, hands folded neatly in his lap like a man waiting for a ritual to end.

When the session finally wrapped up, the therapists thanked them all with the same tone they always used, the one meant to sound warm and grateful, to make patients feel welcome.

Dazai stood and left without comment. Fyodor followed him.

Back in Room 16, the lights had dimmed into their evening setting. A warmer glow filtered through the window, softer than the usual harsh fluorescence. The paper schedule still lay untouched on the desk. Neither of them mentioned Atsushi. Neither of them mentioned the session.

Fyodor sat cross-legged on his bed, elbows resting on his knees, watching Dazai undress slowly, peeling off the day like old skin. Dazai's motions were sluggish, detached. He wasn’t playing a role now. Just moving through the fog.

He didn’t ask if Fyodor would eat dinner in the cafeteria, he knew the answer already.

Night settled like a slow suffocation. The nurse came just after lights-out, clipboard in hand, a paper cup with the familiar white pill inside. She greeted Dazai gently. He smiled back, just enough. Then he took the cup, tipped it to his lips, and swallowed nothing, just like the previous day.

The nurse thanked him, convinced he took the pill, then she left, the door clicked shut with surgical precision.

Dazai sat for a moment, the pill burned under his tongue like it knew it wasn’t wanted. Then, with the same practiced motion, he plucked it from his mouth and slipped it under the pillow—beside the other. He wasn't going to throw them away.

“You’ll run out of room under there,” came Fyodor’s voice, soft and sharp in the dark.

Dazai froze only for a second. Then exhaled quietly through his nose, not turning. “What can I say? I’m a collector.”

Chapter Text

Two days have passed since the group therapy session. Five days since Dazai's admission to the Yokohama Psychiatric Center. The routine moved like a current he let carry him: meals he didn’t eat, Zolpidem he didn’t swallow, group activities he didn't care about, eyes he didn't meet. Except one pair—too still, too purple. Dazai never asked Fyodor about his behavior, but he acknowledged it, played along with whatever game was now on between the two of them. And Fyodor knew that Dazai was aware he was being observed, and he never tried to hide it. 

This morning, the day began with the usual gray light seeping through the narrow windows, the hum of distant voices, footsteps, the clatter of dishes from the cafeteria. Dazai’s world was a monochrome haze he tolerated because resistance felt exhausting and pointless. But then, just as the routine threatened to swallow him whole, the psychiatrist wanted to see him again, exactly three days after their first meeting.

The note was clipped to the door of his room, simple and clinical: “Dazai Osamu: second individual session with Dr. Ootake — 2 p.m.”

Dr. Ootake’s door was closed when he arrived. He knocked softly, then entered at a curt invitation. “Dazai Osamu,” the doctor began, voice blank but not unkind. “Please, have a seat.”

Dazai dropped into the chair opposite the desk with a lazy slouch, arms resting on the armrests. He met Ootake’s gaze with the faintest smirk, as if to say, 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸?

“So,” the psychiatrist said, opening a file. “How have you been these last few days?”

“Oh, I'm living the dream,” Dazai replied, voice laced with dry sarcasm.

Dr. Ootake didn’t react to the sarcasm. He glanced down at the open file, pen tapping against the corner of the page like a metronome. “I see you’ve continued to refuse most of the food.”

Dazai shrugged, letting his head tilt to the side. “I wouldn’t say refuse, I'm just eating what tastes good. You're trying to diagnose me with an eating disorder?”

“The Zolpidem?” the man asked, ignoring Dazai's question.

A beat. Dazai smiled without teeth. “Delicious. Best part of my day.”

Dr. Ootake scribbled something.

“What do you write about me, doctor? Poetry? Diagnoses? Or are you sketching me with devil horns and a little pitchfork?”

Ootake didn’t respond. He turned the page in Dazai’s file, unhurried. “Do you remember what we talked about in our last session?”

“Was I awake?”

“You said you still wanted to die.”

Dazai didn’t answer right away. His body remained loose in the chair, posture indifferent. “I must've been bored.”

The man set the pen down and looked up fully. “What about now? After five days here. After interacting with the others. After the group session.”

“Ah,” Dazai murmured, tapping his fingers against the armrest. “Yes. The thrilling group therapy sessions. That lovely collection of broken people and their lukewarm confessions. How could I forget?”

“I've been told by one of our therapists that you commented once, this morning.”

Dazai gave a small, theatrical gasp. “Are you tracking me, Doctor?”

“I’m observing,” Ootake said. “Just like you.”

For the first time, Dazai’s lips thinned into something that almost resembled discomfort. He looked away, just briefly, before leaning forward and resting an elbow on the desk, too close, almost mockingly so. “You think I’m observing you?” he asked, voice a notch quieter. “I’m not. You’re not that interesting.”

“I wasn’t referring to me.”

There it was. The quiet shift. The needle turned. Dazai stared at the doctor, unreadable. Then leaned back again, a little too quickly, masking it with a stretch. After a moment, he exhaled slowly. “So he's not invisible,” he muttered, half to himself. “And here I thought you all pretended not to notice each other in here.”

“You’re speaking of Fyodor Dostoyevsky?”

Dazai gave a non-answer in the form of a slow blink. “Long name. Deep purple eyes. Religious. That one?”

“He’s been in and out of this facility for a while,” the doctor said, pausing. “And what do you make of that? Of Fyodor’s presence here?”

Dazai shrugged, the movement languid and dismissive. “A walking contradiction wrapped in white. He reads the Bible, but I doubt he’s looking for salvation. Maybe entertainment? Or just a hobby to pass the time while everyone else pretends to be sane.”

Ootake allowed a slight smile, subtle enough to be missed. “Does it bother you? That kind of attention?”

“Bother me?” Dazai echoed, voice dripping with mock disbelief. “I’m here because I want to die, remember? I don’t exactly crave a fan club.”

There was a brief silence. The doctor tapped the file again. “And what about you? Have you noticed any changes in yourself since you arrived? I’ve read your chart, your file. I know about the previous attempts. But it’s not the attempts that interest me. It’s the aftermath, what you do next.”

“You think watching Fyodor means I don’t want to die?” Dazai said, voice lower now, less playful. “That’s your metric?”

“I think watching Fyodor means you’re still participating. Even if you’re pretending not to.”

Dazai’s jaw clenched, subtle but visible. He didn’t speak.

Ootake studied him for a moment longer, then wrote something quick, short, in his notes. “I think that’s enough for today,” he said, voice even. “You can go.”

That was it. No further question on whether Dazai was actually taking his pills or not. No further questions on his 'bonding' with Fyodor. They still had five minutes left, but it was almost like Dr. Ootake was trying to give Dazai time to think.

Dazai stood up slowly, stretching with exaggerated languor as if the weight of the world was best borne by a bored slouch. He gave Dr. Ootake a mock salute and turned toward the door. But before he could step out, the doctor’s voice cut through the thin silence.

“Dazai,” he said, not harsh but with insistence.

The brunette paused, fingers grazing the door handle as if weighing whether to indulge the moment. “Yes?”

“Try to keep an eye on yourself. Not just the obvious stuff—pills, food. The rest too. Take care.”

Dazai smirked, half-amused, half-weary. “Ah, yes, ‘take care.’ Because if I don’t meticulously catalog my internal chaos, who will?” 

Ootake didn’t smile, didn’t even argue. “Just… try.”

That was all. An invitation or a warning—Dazai wasn’t sure which. He stepped out and the heavy door closed softly behind him.

Dazai didn’t bother returning the nod of the nurse passing by, nor did he slow down when the door to room 16 came into view. He pushed it open without knocking.

Inside, Fyodor was standing by the window—he always seemed to be pretending to be doing something when Dazai came back, though he never made it obvious he’d been waiting, nor he tried to hide it.

The clouds outside were a deep, dark grey, it was probably going to rain soon.

Dazai kicked the door shut behind him with his heel. “Missed me?”

Fyodor’s gaze flicked over his shoulder. “You tell me,” he murmured, voice a mere breath.

Dazai rolled his eyes and walked closer to the other man. “How poetic. You must be getting bored of the Bible if you’ve resorted to the weather.”

“On the contrary,” Fyodor said, closing it with a quiet snap. “It’s endlessly relevant. The weather is what God uses to communicate his will. Depending on whether it'll just rain a little or it'll be a storm, it'll mean two completely different things.”  

A moment passed in silence. The brunette ignored Fyodor's words about God, closing what distance remained between them by standing at his side, looking outside as well.

“You went to see Dr. Ootake again,” Fyodor said eventually, settling into the chair near the desk like a shadow melting into fabric. “Second individual session. He usually waits a week between them.”

Dazai didn’t shift his gaze from the clouds. “Didn’t know you were so up to date with the hospital’s social calendar.”

“He deviated from his schedule. That means he thinks your case is different from the rest. Worse.”

“He asked if I still wanted to die.” Dazai turned his head toward Fyodor, grinning lazily. “Can you believe he’s still not convinced?”

Fyodor tilted his head slightly. “You give conflicting data.”

“That’s what keeps me interesting and charming.”

There was silence, as the rain began, a soft tapping against the windows, hesitant but steady.

“He asked about me.” Fyodor stated, it wasn't even a question.

“Yeah, he did.”

The russian didn't say anything in return, he didn't ask what they said about him. He didn't need to, he knew it.

After a long moment of watching the rain pick up, Dazai crossed the room and dropped into his bed with a sigh that felt theatrical even to himself.

Fyodor was watching him too closely again. Dazai could feel it in the silence, in the way the air bent around it.

He closed his eyes. “If you keep staring, I’ll start to think you’re developing feelings.”

“Would that be such a crime?” Fyodor asked softly.

There it was again. The edge. The half-playful, half-serious tilt to his voice that made Dazai’s stomach knot, definitely not in a positive sense. He opened one eye. “Yes. I don’t do feelings. They're boring.”

Fyodor sat on the edge of the bed then, casual, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Dazai didn’t move. Didn’t react.

“ You do feelings ,” Fyodor said. “You just dismember them before anyone else can.”

“Now that sounds like projection.” Dazai teased. “Tell me, do you play therapist to all your roommates or am I just special?”

Fyodor didn’t answer right away. His hand brushed the edge of the blanket beside Dazai’s hip, not touching him, but hovering close enough that he could feel the presence of it. “You’re not special,” Fyodor murmured, “just quite unusual in places like these.”

Dazai cracked a grin at that. “I know, right? People like this are luckier than me and don't end up here when attempting, they succeed. Lucky bastards.”

“You’ve already written your fate,” Fyodor said, almost idly. “In every failed attempt. In every lie you tell the doctors. Even now, lying down as if you're resting, but never resting. Not really.”

“And what would you know about my rest?”

Fyodor tilted his head slightly, dark hair falling just enough to cast a shadow over one eye. “I know your body twitches when asleep. You hate the silence when it stretches too long, but you hate noise even more. I know you grind your teeth when you’re pretending not to think, and you hum under your breath when you think no one is listening.”

Dazai stared up at the ceiling. “Oh, you really are developing feelings .” He paused, smiling to himself. “I'm not always asleep when you think I am,” he said, eyes narrowing. “I’ve heard you walking around at night. Whispering to yourself. Praying, pheraps?”

Fyodor’s voice dropped a little lower. “Does that disturb you?”

“No,” Dazai replied. “It’s kind of hot, actually.”

Silence. Fyodor didn't react to Dazai's obvious provocation, but he retreated his hand from the blanket, now resting it on his lap. “I think,” he said at last, “you like being watched.”

That made Dazai still. He tilted his head, eyes narrowing in something between amusement and irritation. “That’s bold. Is that your diagnosis, Dostoyevsky? Or are you projecting?”

“You noticed it from the start,” Fyodor said, “but you never asked me to stop watching you. You play at annoyance, but you let it happen. You keep showing more.”

A beat. Dazai smirked. “You talk a lot for someone who barely speaks outside this room.”

“You listen a lot for someone who claims not to care.”

Another pause. This one heavier. Fyodor stood up and walked towards the window again.

Dazai didn’t answer Fyodor’s last comment. Not directly, at least. He didn't like the way Fyodor’s words settled in the air, he didn’t like how much attention they revealed. Or how much truth they carried.

And most of all—he didn’t like the way his own chest had clenched in response.

“You really talk like you’re the narrator of someone else’s delusion,” Dazai said eventually, voice dry. “Are you trying to sound profound, or does it just leak out of you naturally?”

Fyodor didn’t turn back to him, the brunette could see the amusement in his eyes through the reflection on the window. “I only speak when I think it’s worth it.”

“That’s cute.” Dazai pushed himself up from the bed with a quick movement, the mattress creaking behind him. “But you’re starting to sound like a prophet.” 

“Is that frustration I hear?” Fyodor asked, soft. “I thought you didn’t feel anything intensely?”

Dazai shot him a look over his shoulder, it wasn't quite a glare, but close. “I feel bored. That’s close enough.”

This time, Dazai didn’t want to play. He moved toward the corner of the room, grabbing one of the scratchy institutional blankets and folding it with unnecessary precision. He didn’t know why. Just needed something to do with his hands. “You know,” he muttered, not turning, “you’re not as interesting as you think.”

A beat.

“I don’t need to be,” Fyodor replied.

Dazai didn’t respond. But later, that night, when the nurse came by with the same white pill in a paper cup, he gave her the same smile, swallowed nothing, hid the Zolpidem under his tongue, waited for her to leave, and then spat it out and slid it under the pillow.

It joined the others. Three? Four? He’d lost count.

And in the dark, he lay still, eyes open, arms folded behind his head. Fyodor didn’t speak. Neither did he. But he could feel the weight of that gaze on him again.

He let it happen. As always.

But this time, as the seconds ticked by, he found himself counting them in his head. 

═════

Four days later it was already time for his third session with dr. Ootake. The psychiatrist had decided they should meet on Tuesday morning, right before lunch and before the creative writing group, and on Friday, in the afternoon after group therapy.

That Tuesday Dazai sat in the sterile chair across from Dr. Ootake, arms folded in a casual slouch, one leg crossed loosely over the other.

Dr. Ootake closed the door behind him, file in hand, then took his seat. “You’re early,” he said.

“I was bored,” Dazai replied, tone light. “Your schedule’s the most exciting thing I’ve seen all week. You missed me, I can tell.” He said with exaggerated cheer.

The psychiatrist offered no expression. “How have you been since our last session?”

“Ah, living an even better dream,” Dazai said. “Someone had a panic attack in group therapy yesterday, in case you hadn’t heard. Truly a transformative experience.”

“We’re not here to gossip about Atsushi-kun’s trauma,” Ootake ignored the way the brunette rolled his eyes, focusing on the dark circles underneath them. “Are you sleeping?”

That was the opening Dazai wanted. He dropped the act just slightly—tilting his head, a faint furrow forming between his brows. “Not really.”

A pause.

“They're giving me Zolpidem,” he continued, tone quieter now, almost cooperative. “But it’s not helping. Not at this dosage , anyway.”

Ootake didn’t reply at first. He reached for Dazai’s chart, flipped a page. “You’ve been prescribed the standard 10 mg.”

“Well,” Dazai murmured, dragging a finger down the edge of the desk, “maybe my insomnia isn’t standard.”

Ootake studied him. “You’re saying the current dose is ineffective?”

“I’m saying I lie there for hours,” Dazai replied, gaze flickering upward. “I’d appreciate something stronger. Or a higher dose. Either works, right? I’m not an expert.”

“Stronger sedatives have stronger side effects.”

“I’ll take my chances,” he said smoothly, smiling.

The doctor nodded slowly, writing something down. “I’ll make a note, but if we increase the dose, the staff will be watching more closely.”

“I’m not selling drugs in the hallway, Doc. I just want to sleep.” 

Another long look. Another pause.

“Very well,” Ootake said, closing the file. “We’ll increase it slightly. I’ll notify the nurse staff. But—” his voice shifted, grew firmer, “if I suspect you’re not taking it, we stop.”

Dazai gave a slow nod. “Scout’s honor.” But his smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“You were never a scout,” Ootake said flatly.

“True.” Dazai leaned back in the chair with a slow breath. “Too many uniforms. Too many rules.”

Dr. Ootake didn’t rise to the bait. He folded his hands atop the file. “So. Let’s revisit something from our first conversation.”

Dazai arched a brow. “You mean the part where I said I wanted to die, or the part where I implied I didn’t like the food?”

“The part where you said no one would care if you did.”

There it was. The thread Dazai knew the man would circle back to eventually. He didn’t flinch, but his gaze went glassy for just a second—like a screen flickering behind his eyes. “That’s not quite what I said.”

“It’s what you meant.”

The silence that followed was intentional. Dazai let it stretch long enough to make it feel meaningful. Then he smiled again, slower this time, thinner. “You know, you’re surprisingly persistent for someone who looks like a failed accountant.”

“I’m a psychiatrist.”

“Exactly.”

Ootake waited, he always did. He never interrupted. Never filled silence the way other people did—Dazai hated that. He hated how it left room for thoughts to echo louder in the stillness.

Finally, the brunette exhaled. “Fyodor,” he stopped, not quite sure of why the name came up in his mind right now, not quite sure of what he was gonna say.

The doctor didn’t blink. “He watches you.”

“That’s not news, we discussed it last week.”

“But you watch him, too .”

Dazai didn’t reply. His fingers curled slightly on the armrest, knuckles tightening. He looked suddenly tired—like the layers of sarcasm were starting to slip.

Ootake leaned forward, just slightly. “He represents something to you. I’m not asking what. I just want you to admit it.”

The younger man stared past the desk for a long moment, then dragged a hand through his hair, slow, deliberate. “He’s quiet,” Dazai said at last, voice low. “I can’t hear my own head when everyone else is talking. But when he’s there, it’s quiet.”

Ootake’s pen moved on the paper. Dazai noticed. “Don’t romanticize it. I’m not.”

“I’m not writing down whether I think you’re developing romantic feelings or not,” Ootake replied. “I’m interested in why that quiet matters so much to you.”

“Because I never had it,” Dazai said, too fast. Then, catching himself, he laughed. “ Christ . That almost sounded like a confession. I must really be sleep-deprived.”

“You’re starting to slip,” Ootake said quietly.

Dazai’s head turned, sharply. “Excuse me?”

“I mean the performance,” the doctor clarified. “You’re good. But cracks form when you’re tired. Hungry. Untouched by medication. When you start asking for higher doses, that’s when I know something’s changing.”

The brunette looked away again. “You don’t know anything.”

“I don’t need to,” Ootake said calmly. “Because you do. And I think that’s what scares you more than dying.”

There was no reply. 

The silence this time wasn’t defensive. It was surrender, of a sort.

After a few seconds, the doctor glanced at the clock on the wall. “Our time’s up.”

Dazai stood without being asked. But he didn’t move to leave right away. His voice was softer when he finally spoke. “You know he prays at night?”

Ootake raised a brow. “And that surprises you?”

“No,” Dazai murmured, half-smiling. “It’s just strange. I keep trying to decide if it means he’s crazy... or if I am, for listening.”

The doctor said nothing. Dazai turned, hand brushing the doorknob, then hesitated. “By the way... thanks for the dosage bump. I’m sure it’ll work wonders.”

“If it doesn’t,” Ootake replied, “I’ll know.”

Dazai didn’t answer. Just opened the door and stepped out into the sterile hallway, leaving the taste of the conversation bitter at the back of his tongue.

The hallway smelled like bleach and chicken broth. Dazai didn’t head back to Room 16.

He wasn’t in the mood to play with Fyodor, quite the opposite, the thought irritated him slightly.

He walked with slow steps toward the cafeteria, hands deep in his pockets, posture loose. The lunchtime crowd had already begun to form—a line of patients shuffling forward with quiet murmurs and twitchy fingers, some arguing about dessert rations, some barely registering the movement at all.

He slid into the line somewhere in the middle, grabbing a tray with one hand. The food was the usual: overcooked rice, pale green beans and chicken. He didn’t even glance at it. He just moved forward until the smell became tolerable.

He found Atsushi at the edge of the room, alone, hunched over a tray with a fork in one hand, unmoving. He looked like he was trying to shrink into himself. Dazai remembered the panic attack the boy had yesterday—he hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time. But now, with Fyodor’s eyes not on him, and Ootake’s words still echoing behind his ribs, he felt like playing something different.

So he moved. Tray in hand, he crossed the room and dropped into the chair across from Atsushi without a word. The silver-haired boy froze mid-bite. His eyes lifted slowly, wide and uncertain, like he couldn’t tell if this was a mistake or he was hallucinating.

Dazai rested his chin in his palm. “You don’t eat much,” he said casually, as if this were a perfectly normal way to start a conversation with a stranger.

Atsushi blinked. “I—what?”

The man gestured lazily to the tray. “You’ve been poking at those beans for the last five minutes. They’re not going to eat you, it’s the other way around.”

“I wasn’t—I mean—I eat,” Atsushi said quickly, then seemed to realize how defensive it sounded. He shrank again. “Sorry. I just didn’t expect... anyone to sit here.”

Dazai’s eyes scanned him slowly, thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s because you make yourself look like a broken vending machine. People assume they’ll lose change trying.”

The younger man’s mouth opened, stunned. “That’s... really rude.”

Dazai smirked. “I’ve been called worse. Don’t worry, I’m being affectionate.”

Atsushi’s gaze dropped to his tray. He was clearly overwhelmed, but he didn’t move, he didn’t tell Dazai to leave. That was something. After a pause, he spoke, quieter, “Why are you here?”

“Existentially, or at this table?”

“The table.”

Dazai didn’t answer right away. His gaze had drifted again—past Atsushi’s shoulder, past the row of patients murmuring to each other or picking at their food like birds on a wire. Then, softly, he said, “You talked in group last week.”

Atsushi looked surprised. “Yeah...?”

“You said something about drowning without water.”

“Oh. That.” His shoulders tensed. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t a big deal.”

Dazai tilted his head. “You weren’t wrong.”

The boy glanced up. Their eyes met for a brief second, and in that second Dazai saw it—how much Atsushi was holding in. The fear. The shame. The constant, gnawing edge of trying for a world that never gave him instructions. He’d seen it before. In mirrors.

Dazai leaned back, letting the chair creak beneath him. “They’ll tell you you’re improving if you make eye contact. If you eat a little. If you nod at the right moments. But they don’t know what to do when you start talking like you see through it.”

“Through what?”

“This place,” Dazai said, gesturing loosely. “The scripts. The little games they play to keep the suicide statistics pretty.”

The younger man looked down again, then said, almost whispering, “I don’t want to attempt suicide, I just… want to get better.”

“You think anyone gets better in here?” Dazai’s smile was bitter. “It’s only the ones who were never really beyond saving.”

That hung in the air too long.

Dazai moved a piece of chicken across his tray, still untouched. “I’m not here to mentor you, by the way. Don’t get excited.”

“I wasn’t,” Atsushi said quickly.

“Good. I’m a terrible role model.” Dazai glanced at him again. “But if you ever want someone to sit here again… I might be bored enough.”

That made Atsushi pause. Then, slowly, like he wasn’t sure the words would work, with a trembling smile, he said: “Thanks.” 

Dazai offered a wink. Neither of them touched the food.

Back to room 16, Dazai didn’t hesitate at the door, he just pushed it open and stepped inside.

Fyodor was sitting in the chair by the window, legs crossed, Bible unopened on his lap like it had been placed there and forgotten. His head turned slightly at the sound of the door, but his eyes didn’t lift. Not immediately.

Dazai closed the door with his heel. “You’ll never guess what I did.”

Fyodor didn’t speak.

“I sat with someone—Atsushi. You remember him. The one who had a panic attack first thing in the morning yesterday during group therapy.”

Still no response. But Fyodor’s gaze had moved now, slowly, like a blade unsheathing. He looked at Dazai in full, eyes sharp. “You don’t usually seek out others.”

“And?”

“You don’t sit with people,” Fyodor said.

“Maybe I’m evolving,” Dazai replied, shrugging. He sat at the edge of his bed. “Isn’t that what this place is for?”

Fyodor’s expression didn’t shift. But his hands, resting over the book, had gone still. Too still. “You’re not evolving,” he murmured. 

He stood then—slow, graceful, effortless. He crossed the room and stopped just beside Dazai’s bed. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that Dazai could feel it. What him sitting with Atsushi did to Fyodor. 

“You collect pills under your pillow,” Fyodor said. “You lie to the nurses. You lie to Ootake. And now you’re lying to me.”

Dazai’s smile tightened. “What exactly do you think I’m lying about?”

The other man stared at him, “you don’t want to connect with anyone here. So why him?”

Dazai looked up. “Because he reminds me of something.”

“What?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Fyodor crouched then, kneeling in front of him. “Or maybe,” he said softly, “you just needed someone who doesn’t know what to look for.”

Dazai's breath caught—but he didn't show it. “You’re not subtle, you know.”

“And you’re not nearly as detached as you pretend to be.”

Silence. In that moment, the brunette realized his hands were clenched against the mattress. He forced them open. “Are you jealous?”

Fyodor blinked once. “No.”

“You’re acting like it.”

“I’m acting like someone who knows what you are,” Fyodor said, his purple eyes burning. “You want someone to look at you without seeing the damage. And you think Atsushi’s too innocent to notice the blood.”

Then Dazai smiled—bitter and amused. “You really are jealous. I was just talking to someone.”

“You don’t ‘just’ do anything,” Fyodor murmured. Then he turned, walked to his own bed, and sat down without another word.

Dazai didn’t speak right away. He just sat there on the edge of the bed, eyes tracking Fyodor’s every movement as the man walked away and sat: back straight, face unreadable, hands folded neatly in his lap as if the entire confrontation had been procedural. A clinical dismantling.

But Dazai was smiling now. Quiet. Thin. Not triumphant exactly, but close. Because there it was —that crack. That rare break in Fyodor’s restraint.

Jealousy. Possessiveness. It didn’t matter what name it wore. What mattered was that it had worked .

He hadn’t even needed to touch anyone. Just sit beside them. Mention he had talked to another patient. Fyodor’s reaction had been slow-burning, measured, and somehow more satisfying than rage or panic would’ve been. The silence around it was louder than any accusation.

He lay back across the bed, arms tucked behind his head, turning toward Fyodor without looking directly at him. “You should come to Creative Writing today. It’s in an hour, and you know how therapeutic it is to describe your feelings in third-person metaphors.” Dazai’s tone was all feigned innocence.

Fyodor didn’t take the bait. “No, I have no feelings to describe.”

“Oh, come on,” Dazai said, rolling onto his side to face him properly. “You could write about storms and God. Or, I don’t know, sins or something like that. It’s all very you .”

Fyodor finally turned his head slightly, eyes meeting his. “You want me there?”

The other paused, just a second too long, long enough to make Fyodor’s lips twitch, amused. “I’ll think about it.” The Russian said in the end.

That was the closest thing to a yes anyone here ever got from him.

═════

Fifty-five minutes later, at 1:52 PM, the chairs in room 7B had been rearranged in a loose circle. The atmosphere was unusually calm; the usual nurse facilitator, a short, tired woman named Asami, was handing out dull pencils and cheap paper, already steeling herself for another hour of awkward metaphors and forced participation.

Dazai was there already, lounging in his seat, legs stretched out, paper in hand, doodling something he would later claim was poetry if called out to read. Atsushi sat to his right, still clearly unsure whether he belonged there.

The door opened. And several things happened at once.

Asami glanced up from her clipboard, expecting another patient. Then froze.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky stepped inside the room. Calm, composed, in no rush. His presence was quiet, but the energy shifted. Several patients glanced up from their seats. Some stared. One nurse standing near the window straightened, visibly tense.

Because Fyodor never came to Creative Writing. Not in the entire time he’d been admitted. Not once .

He was always listed on the sign-up sheets, technically, just like all of the other patients. But he never showed up.

Until now.

He moved toward the circle with eerie calm, his steps slow and soundless. And then, without looking at anyone else, he sat right at Dazai’s left.

The silence lasted a little too long before Asami cleared her throat awkwardly. “Ah… welcome, Dostoevsky-san. It’s… good to see you joining us.”

Fyodor gave her a nod so faint it barely qualified as acknowledgment.

Dazai, beside him, didn’t look up from his paper. But he was grinning—just slightly, just to himself. 

Asami tried to regain control of the room. “Today’s prompt is simple,” she began, tapping her pen against the clipboard like it might steady her nerves. “I want you to write a short piece in the first person or third, any form you like, based on the theme of ‘unsaid things.’”

A pause.

“Could be something you wanted to say but didn’t. A secret. A silence that meant more than words. Anything along those lines.” She handed out the last few pencils, her gaze flicking nervously between Dazai and Fyodor, who sat side by side like a gravitational anomaly in the room.

Dazai twirled his pencil once, eyes scanning the page lazily. “How poetic,” he murmured under his breath. “Is murder considered an ‘unsaid thing’ if you never get caught?”

Atsushi, seated to his right, shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think that’s… the point,” he mumbled.

“I didn’t ask for a moral compass,” The man replied, not unkindly. He didn’t look at Atsushi when he said it. He was listening to something else. Watching something else.

Fyodor hadn’t moved since he sat. His paper remained blank. Pencil untouched. But his posture was relaxed, like he was waiting to be amused.

After a few minutes, the scribbling began. A few patients hunched over their pages, others stared into space like they were waiting for divine inspiration. Atsushi clutched his pencil tight, biting his bottom lip as he tried to write something—anything—that wouldn’t sound like a cry for help.

Dazai finally began to write. Not with speed, just a smooth, looping hand, like he was writing from muscle memory. 

Fyodor, without even glancing at his paper, spoke. “Do you think secrets lose their meaning once spoken?” His voice was low, measured, but loud enough to cut through the room’s ambient silence. All movement slowed.

Asami blinked. “This isn’t the sharing portion yet—”

But Dazai answered before she could finish. “ No ,” he said, still writing. “They just change shape. Sometimes they get worse.”

Asami hesitated, lips parted as if to intervene—but something in the air made her think better of it. She simply cleared her throat and said, “Let’s try to keep the discussion for later. For now, just focus on the writing.”

The scratching of pencils resumed, albeit more hesitantly. Asami sat straighter in her chair, a clipboard balanced on her knee, eyes drifting between patients with professional calm, but her pen hadn’t moved in minutes. She was frozen, and she was not the only one.

The second nurse shifted subtly where she stood near the door. Her eyes flicked toward Fyodor and then toward Dazai. Not openly, just enough to betray the discomfort. 

Fyodor Dostoevsky never spoke in groups. He never even attended group activities.

And he had never been spoken to like that . Not until now. Not until Dazai.

Atsushi had begun writing something, nothing particularly coherent, just phrases, fragments, incomplete thoughts. “I feel like…” followed by silence, then a line through it. “Sometimes it’s like…” scratched out too. He ended up with a page covered in blackened spirals where the sentences once were. His pencil moved faster when he was erasing than when he was writing. 

Eventually, the session timer beeped softly. She stood. “Alright, let’s pause here. You don’t need to read aloud. This exercise is for yourselves, just to get things out of your head and onto the page.”

A few patients nodded. Others didn’t react. Some of the youngest were disappointed, as they wanted to share their thoughts.

Dazai set his pencil down with a delicate click . He didn’t fold the paper, didn’t tuck it away—he simply left it there, in full view, scrawled in his looping, unconcerned handwriting:

“Things that can’t be said in group.”

Asami stepped forward with her usual gentle efficiency, collecting what papers she could. A few patients handed them over with tired eyes. A few shook their heads. Dazai folded his in half and passed it forward, offering her a faint smile, but she didn’t smile back.

Fyodor’s page was blank when he handed it to Asami, she took it anyway, without a word.

A few patients began to move, leaving the room after nodding to Asami. As the shuffle of chairs and soft murmurs of dismissed patients faded from the room, she lingered, her eyes remained fixed on two of the papers in her hand. One was blank. The other was not. “Things that can’t be said in group.” was the only thing on the paper, and Dazai definitely did it on purpose. 

The other nurse normally would have begun tidying up the room by now—collecting stray pencils, checking the windows, resetting the circle for the next group. But she didn’t move. She looked at Fyodor. Then at Dazai. 

“You alright?” Asami asked quietly, noticing how the other woman seemed so lost in thought. 

“I’m fine,” she said automatically. But her eyes were still on Fyodor. He hadn’t said a word after speaking that one time. And Dazai—he answered him like it was a private conversation they’d invited everyone else to accidentally overhear. They both have never seen anyone do that. Not with Fyodor. He exuded a pressure that made most people shut down before they even made eye contact. But Dazai? Dazai never looked away. He seemed pretty chill with Fyodor’s presence.

“You ever seen him act like that before?” she whispered to Asami, keeping her eyes on Fyodor as he finally rose from his seat, he walked toward the door without even glancing at either staff member.

“No,” Asami replied, quiet.

A pause.

“And the other one... Osamu Dazai. He’s new, they’re roommates, but—” Asami looked down again at the folded sheet in her hand. “Even Fyodor’s previous roommate felt uneasy with him.”

The other nurse moved, stepping closer, her voice even lower. “What are we supposed to do about this?”

Asami looked down at the folded paper one more time. Then at the blank page behind it. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

Whatever was forming between those two was chemistry the way chemicals combust. They weren’t helping each other.

Chapter Text

Dazai sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on knees, shirt sleeves pushed up just far enough to show the old bandaging at his wrists. The lights were dimmed in room 16, a soft orange glow bleeding from the hallway through the door left slightly ajar. Dinner had been the usual, bland and flavorless. 

He didn’t look up when the knock came, he knew it was the nurse, just like every night.

“Dazai-san,” she greeted softly, the same way she always did—polite, even warm, as if the gentle tone could somehow balance. In her hand: the little paper cup.

This time, he saw it immediately. Two white pills.

His eyes flicked downward for a second, but before he could ask, the nurse answered the unspoken question.

“Dr. Ootake adjusted your prescription,” she said quietly. “He asked that I confirm you’re taking it properly tonight.” She paused. “So I’ll need to check your mouth after you swallow.”

Dazai’s body remained still, but his heart thumped once. She smiled, almost apologetically. “I’m sorry. Just protocol.”

He gave a slow nod, trying not to let the sudden tension show in his shoulders.

The pills sat dry on his tongue, he didn’t swallow. Of course he didn’t. But now, he was out of time. He opened his mouth, about to stall—maybe say something clever, maybe let out the first joke that came to his mind—

And then Fyodor spoke. “Excuse me,” his voice cut in, smooth and low from across the room, “we’re out of shampoo.”

The nurse blinked, turning her head. “Sorry?” she asked, momentarily thrown.

Fyodor stood near the window, arms folded lightly. He wasn’t looking at Dazai. “In the bathroom. I asked for it three days ago. No one brought any. I can’t shower without it, I don’t use the generic one.”

A pause. Her eyes flicked back to Dazai, then to Fyodor. “I… I can check. Just a moment.” She stepped past them toward the adjoining bathroom, her clipboard held tightly under her arm.

Dazai didn’t waste a second. He turned slightly, hand at his mouth, and spit the pills into his palm in a quick and clean motion, then slid them into his pocket. The nurse’s voice echoed faintly from the bathroom. “I see conditioner, but no shampoo. I’ll flag it to be restocked.”

Fyodor hummed in response and nodded. She reappeared a moment later, expression brisk but polite. “Now, Dazai-san—open your mouth, please.” Dazai turned to her, obedient as ever. He opened his mouth, tilted his head slightly to the side, tongue clean, nothing hidden. He even lifted it with the confidence of someone who didn’t care about the indignity of being checked like a child.

She peered in, nodded, and made a note on her clipboard. “Alright, thank you.” The door shut behind her with a soft click . Dazai let out a slow breath, then turned his head to Fyodor, who returned to the window, facing away.

“You really are a creep,” Dazai muttered.

Fyodor’s reflection in the glass smiled faintly. “You’re welcome.”

And then there was silence again.

Dazai remained sitting, his hand near his pocket where the pills had disappeared. Ten now. Ten little white orbs. 100 milligrams of Zolpidem.

That quantity of Zolpidem alone wouldn’t do it. The first time he’d tried he had double the amount and still survived. Barely fourteen and hopeful. Stupid. Hope was a kind of stupidity, he thought. It gave you the arrogance to believe you might find peace.

If he could get more pills from the nurse’s cart. Maybe swipe a handful during one of those long hallway waits. Add it to the rest, get them all in his system with some yogurt to make his stomach adjust to them and lower the chance of puking them all out. Wait until Fyodor slept—if he ever slept—or maybe not wait at all.

And Fyodor wouldn’t stop him, that was the strangest part. That he knew , and instead of drawing lines, he distracted the nurse. Instead of a warning, he asked for shampoo. That was the part that twisted something low in Dazai’s stomach.

The brunette closed his eyes briefly, letting the quiet pulse behind his eyelids settle. When he opened them, Fyodor was still by the window, he hadn’t turned around to look at him. 

His thumb tapped once against the pills in his pocket. Ten. Still ten. He needed more, more than enough. More than he ever took, if possible, but that would take too much time.

He imagined it, just for a moment, the softness of the night swallowing him whole, the heat in his chest burning out. The final breath—then just gone.

He imagined Fyodor finding him. And that thought should have been satisfying. It should have felt good, like some kind of twisted last word in a game neither of them wanted to win. But instead, it left a hollow taste in his mouth.

Because Fyodor wouldn’t react. Not like the others. He wouldn’t cry. He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t even shake him. He would simply look at him, like a question had finally been answered. Like he already knew.

He shifted, slowly lowering himself to sit fully on the bed, back against the wall, eyes locked on the half-lit silhouette by the window. “You didn’t have to,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper.

Fyodor didn’t move. The room was still. The hallway outside ticked forward with footsteps and soft voices, but inside, it was as if time had decided to stop.

Dazai shifted again, not because he was uncomfortable, but because stillness made him too aware of his own body. The heaviness in his bones, the absence of hunger, the lingering pressure of the pills in his pocket. “You didn’t have to distract her,” he said again, this time louder. “I would’ve figured something out.”

Fyodor turned slightly, casting half his face in faint gold because of the lamp’s light. “No, you wouldn’t have.”

Dazai let out a quiet laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean? You think I’m stupid?”

“I didn’t do it for you,” Fyodor said eventually. “I did it because you’re desperate, it makes people clumsy.”

“Is this a game to you?” The other murmured, eyes still on the silhouette.

“No,” Fyodor replied. “But I enjoy watching your strategy.”

Another silence stretched, and Dazai found himself hating how familiar it felt. Comfortable, even. 

“You don’t think I’ll do it.”

“I would never interfere with your freedom,” Fyodor said simply.

The silence in room 16 turned dense, Dazai shifted again, this time leaning his head back until it tapped against the wall. A dull thud, as if trying to knock something loose in his skull. It didn’t help. The silence was broken by a laugh that came out of Dazai, but it was too empty to be a laugh. 

No one had ever called it freedom before. They called it failure, regression, relapse, cowardice. But Fyodor said ‘freedom’ and Dazai didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t make him feel better, it made him feel seen —in a way he didn’t want to be. Like his pain wasn’t something to fix, just something to witness and embrace.

He reached into his pocket, feeling the soft rattle of the pills against his fingertips, he took them out and hid them under the pillow with the rest.

Dazai had done this dance before—the collecting, the hiding, the planning. He knew the way his thoughts folded around the logistics, the way his brain obsessed over it until he finally attempted again. But this time it felt different, because someone saw through him now, and still didn’t stop him.

He thought of Dr. Ootake. Of the blank sympathy in his voice. Of how he’d said “take care” as if someone like Dazai knew how to do that. He's heard those words so many times already, from family members, ‘friends’, other doctors… yet he couldn’t understand how it looked so easy for the people pronouncing them. ‘Take care’ didn’t mean anything to Dazai.

“What if I want someone to stop me?” 

Silence. Fyodor didn’t answer, and maybe that was worse. Because Dazai hadn’t really expected anything. Not a “don’t,” not a “please,” not some softly spoken contradiction to cut through the quiet, that would have upset him more than the silence. But still—somewhere beneath the surface, in the marrow-deep part of him that hadn’t yet burned out—he wanted something. 

It had slipped out, and now it echoed there in the silence— What if I want someone to stop me? —it was pathetic, embarrassing, something that shouldn’t have been said at all. Dazai closed his eyes for a second, maybe longer. He turned his head against the pillow. The silhouette by the window hadn’t moved and maybe he never would. Maybe that was the point. A monument to what people looked like after the world hollowed them out, made marble of their grief and quiet of their rebellion.

Fyodor felt nothing at all, and Dazai liked to believe that he didn’t feel either. But he hated how much he liked being seen by him, deep down.

His head sank deeper into the pillow, the cheap polyester was scratchy against his cheek. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. The silence wasn’t comforting, but it was all he was used to, and he could exist inside it for a while longer.

Dazai let his eyes fall shut. He didn’t want to think anymore.

Not about pills. Not about Fyodor. Not about wanting someone to stop him. Not about how no one ever had.

═════

The light was already leaking in when he blinked awake. The air in room 16 was quiet. Still. Too still. Dazai sat up slowly, fingers brushing his forehead. The first thing he noticed: the silence. The second—Fyodor's bed was made. The man was gone.

That was strange. Not in the catastrophic, something’s wrong kind of way, but in the this doesn’t happen kind of way. Fyodor was never out of the room in the morning, he wasn’t even sure if psychiatrists even ever called him for a session, since it never happened during this week and a half he has been here. He never even once went to breakfast in the cafeteria. He didn’t follow the schedule unless forced. He made the world adjust to him, not the other way around. 

Dazai stretched slowly, letting his shoulders crack. He didn’t overthink it. Not out loud, anyway, there were other things on his mind. He got dressed without much thought. Stiff routine, muscle memory. Shirt. Pants. Sweater. He ignored the mirror like he always did.

When he stepped into the cafeteria, the first thing he noticed wasn’t the food. It wasn’t the tables, or the line, or the dull murmur of voices. It was the silence. Not complete, but quieter than usual. Subdued. The voices were lower. Not hushed—restrained. Like someone had turned down the volume on everyone’s confidence.

The second thing he noticed was Fyodor.

Across from him: Atsushi.

Dazai paused in the doorway for a moment, no one noticed him. He saw it clearly: the way the cooks glanced over at Fyodor, the way the nurse near the water station kept checking her clipboard without writing anything down. 

Fyodor sipped his tea like nothing was unusual, as if he always sat there, while Atsushi looked wrecked. Not visibly, he wasn’t crying, wasn’t trembling—but there was a certain tension to his face, it was the way someone looks when they’re trying very, very hard not to show discomfort. His hands sat too neatly in his lap, his food untouched.

Dazai picked up his tray, moved forward, and sat down beside them, next to Atsushi, like it was the most normal thing in the world, after all, he knew that was exactly what Fyodor expected, so why not indulge him?

“Morning,” the brunette said, Atsushi jumped slightly, Fyodor didn’t even look at him. Dazai turned his head slightly toward Atsushi. “He bothering you?”

The boy flinched at the directness, eyes darting between the two of them. “N-no,” he said quickly. “It’s fine. Really.”

He said it was fine, but his shoulders were tense, his whole posture indicated how uneasy he was with Fyodor’s presence. Dazai watched him for a moment longer, then looked at the tray in front of him, the toast was untouched, the eggs looked colder than usual. That was the kind of breakfast someone that hadn’t even tried to pretend to eat.

Around them, the cafeteria sounded like a whole different room, a girl at the table behind them was whispering instead of talking, a boy at the window who usually hummed to himself while eating stared at his spoon, motionless. The staff didn’t interrupt—not in the usual way. A nurse passed through the rows of tables with her clipboard clutched tighter than normal, eyes skimming over Fyodor like she didn’t see him, even though she clearly did.

Dazai leaned back in his chair, the metal frame creaking slightly. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he murmured, still speaking to Atsushi. The boy opened his mouth, closed it. Then, softly, “he was just asking a few questions...”

“Was he?” Dazai asked, head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing in mock interest. “Because the last time Fyodor asked someone questions in a public setting, Asami didn’t blink for a full minute.”

That earned him the faintest curl of Fyodor’s mouth. 

“You don’t normally come to breakfast,” he said, louder this time. Directly to Fyodor now. “Change of heart? Or did you just feel like making everyone else shit their pants? You must be feeling sociable.”

Fyodor stirred his tea slowly, looking up, “Atsushi was alone,” he said simply. Dazai blinked once. Atsushi made a small, strangled sound at that, caught between protest and fear. His fingers curled slightly on the edge of his tray. He looked like he was trying not to disappear. The brunette exhaled slowly. The words landed wrong, not because they were cruel—but because they weren’t. Not really. And that infuriated him more. He wanted Fyodor to be cruel, because that would be the only way to make it make sense. 

He looked down at his tray, prodded the eggs once with his fork, then set it down. His appetite was gone—if it had ever been there to begin with. He saw it now. The entire scene.

Fyodor wasn’t here for Atsushi, that had never been the point. Fyodor was here for him . The boy was collateral—an object placed into the center of the room to test the tension in Dazai’s throat. Because the day before, Dazai had spoken to Atsushi. Not cruelly, not meaningfully. Just literally spoken . And now Fyodor sat across from the boy. 

His lips parted, then closed again. No comeback. No joke. The words were turning too fast in his head to grab one, and before he could speak, Atsushi murmured something about needing to take his medication, his voice was feeble, that was probably an excuse, but neither of them stopped him when he stood and left his tray untouched. The sound of his steps faded into the low hum of the cafeteria, but even that felt duller. 

And then it was just the two of them.

Dazai didn’t look at Fyodor. He stared down at his tray instead—cold toast, eggs coagulated into something that could no longer be called food. Everything around him felt static. Flattened. “You know,” he said quietly, still not looking up, “for someone who claims not to care, you’re really good at ruining people’s mornings.”

Fyodor’s spoon tapped once against the rim of his cup. “Am I ruining it, or just reminding you it was never good to begin with?”

That did it. The breath caught in Dazai’s throat, sharp and bitter. He wasn’t usually the type to react impulsively, not at all, but he could stand Fyodor’s presence at the moment. He pushed his chair back abruptly. The scrape of metal on the tile was too loud, it drew a few glances. He didn’t care, he let them look. Let them know something was cracking.

He stood.

“You’re fucking transparent,” he said, voice low but venomous. “You think you’re subtle? You think your little power plays go unnoticed?”

Fyodor didn’t react, and that made it worse.

“You came down here just to sit across from him. Just to watch me. And what? See if I’d flinch? See if I’d care?” Dazai laughed once, hollow and ugly. “ I don’t .” He wanted it to hurt. Wanted to say it like it was a blade, like he was stabbing his chest. Fyodor only tilted his head, his purple eyes half-lidded. “You do.”

Dazai’s hands curled into fists at his sides, sleeves falling back just enough to cover the old, worn bandages on his wrists. “You don’t get to play with people like that.”

“You do,” Fyodor replied calmly. “So why shouldn’t I?”

That silence again. That mirror. Dazai hated it. 

He turned sharply and left his tray behind, walking out of the cafeteria ignoring the looks, ignoring the nurse who started to say something. He wanted to scream. He wanted to throw something. He wanted to go back in and make Fyodor feel something. Anything.

He didn’t stop walking until he reached the end of the hall—the one near the rec room, where no one ever went in the morning, during breakfast time. He pressed his back to the wall and slid down slowly, knees bent, arms resting over them. Breathing shallow, controlled.

Dazai had played people his entire life. Slipped in and out of dynamics like clothes, tried on personalities the way others tried on coats. He flirted with vulnerability like a joke, let it sting just enough to make others think they’d touched something real. Someone real. And maybe they had. Just not enough to matter.

But Fyodor didn’t reach for softness. He didn’t try to manipulate with affection or demand with cruelty. He used silence. distance, the implied understanding. He let Dazai collect pills under his pillow, he distracted the nurse, he didn't stop him.

And then he did this. All so Dazai would show his hand first.

And he had. God , he had.

Dazai let his head fall back against the wall, the soft thud echoing somewhere in his chest. His pulse was still racing. He tried to slow it, counting the inhales. Four. Hold. Exhale. Four. But it didn’t go away. The humiliation didn’t go away either.

Because Fyodor was right, he did care, just not in the way he pretended to.

Dazai laughed, it was soft and bitter. “You’re psychotic.” he murmured, not directed at himself.

He was supposed to be smarter than this. He hadn’t meant to lose it. That was the worst part. He’d survived years by not reacting, letting the world claw at him, begging him to flinch, and he never gave it the satisfaction. But Fyodor didn’t claw. Fyodor didn’t beg. Fyodor waited. And Dazai walked straight into it.

He pressed a hand over his face, palm flat against the bridge of his nose. Ten pills. Under the pillow. He couldnìt wait any longer.

He heard the soft squeak of rubber soles on linoleum before he saw anyone, and when he looked up, it wasn’t a nurse. It was Atsushi—standing at the end of the corridor, hesitant, one foot slightly turned as if considering whether to walk away.

Dazai didn’t speak. Atsushi didn’t come closer. They just looked at each other for a second too long.

Then the boy nodded once, as if apologizing for something, and disappeared back around the corner.

Dazai let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

Maybe later he’d go back to his room. Maybe not.

Maybe he’d wait until tonight and take two more pills.

Maybe not.

═════

The clock ticked past the hour in a rhythm too precise to be comforting. The ring of chairs in Room 5D looked the same as always, some legs uneven, arranged in a way that tried to feel inviting and failed spectacularly.

One of the two nurses was adjusting the blinds when the door opened. Dazai strolled in, exactly one minute late. He looked normal. Composed. No tension in his shoulders, no hesitation in his steps. His shirt sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms, showing the bandages, and his brown hair had the same messiness as usual. Even the faint curve of his mouth was back.

A few patients looked up. A few looked at him. There was no whispering, but the air shifted—eyes flicked toward him, then away. Not openly. No one wanted to challenge him after seeing him talk to Fyodor like that. They had felt what happened in the cafeteria.

Dazai didn’t care. He didn’t slow down. He didn’t sit next to Atsushi. Dazai’s absence beside him was clearly intentional.

The boy was already in his usual chair, arms pulled close to his chest, looking paler than usual. He stared ahead, like if he didn’t make eye contact, the memory of breakfast wouldn’t count. Despite having left a few moments before the disaster, he still heard other patients mumbling about what happened.

Dazai took a seat two chairs down, next to a girl who immediately looked anywhere but at him. The nurse glanced back over her shoulder, her expression unreadable. “Welcome, Dazai,” she said, a touch too formal. “Glad you’re here.”

He nodded once. “Wouldn’t miss it,” he replied mildly, voice velvet-smooth.

The nurse finished with the blinds and turned to face the group, clipboard in hand, her expression arranged into something like calm neutrality. The other nurse remained near the door—just like always.

“Let’s start with something simple,” the nurse began. “Just a sentence or two about how your day’s going so far. No pressure to be deep. Just honest.” 

The first patient spoke. Then another. Quiet voices, hesitant but willing. Someone mentioned a dream they had. Someone else said they didn’t sleep. The girl on Dazai’s side said she missed her cat. No one looked at the brunette. When it came to Atsushi, he hesitated. His eyes flicked sideways, barely, and then dropped again to his lap. “Fine,” he mumbled. “Nothing to say.” The nurse nodded gently, writing something down. She didn’t ask him to elaborate. Then the circle tilted toward Dazai. He tilted his head slightly, catching the pause. “Me already?” he said with light surprise. “You’re going fast today.”

“Only if you’re ready,” the nurse replied smoothly. Her tone was still pleasant, but firmer now. Watchful. He smiled. “Of course I’m ready. Always.” 

He looked up lazily, like he hadn’t been paying attention at all. “I’m feeling well rested,” he said. “Energized, even. Breakfast was... exceptional.”

The session carried on. Safe topics, surface-level thoughts. Someone mentioned missing music. Another patient talked about the smell of the cafeteria’s coffee. The nurse offered small prompts, never pushing too far. But everyone in the room felt it. The shift. The unsaid fact that something had happened . That breakfast had cracked something in the atmosphere. That Dazai had watched something unravel and smiled.

Near the end of the session, the nurse looked up from her notes. Her voice was calm, professional. “I want to remind everyone,” she said, “that this room is a space for honesty, but also for safety. If something happens—if something feels wrong—you can always speak to me or your psychiatrist privately.”

Everyone nodded. One or two patients glanced toward the floor. One girl tucked her sleeves tighter around her wrists. Atsushi didn’t nod at all.

Dazai, of course, smiled. Just enough to suggest he found the reminder charming. Like she’d read from a handbook and expected it to change something.

The nurse didn’t look at him when she set the clipboard down. “Thank you for sharing today,” she said, her voice still composed but thinner around the edges. “The next session is on Friday morning.”

═════

The cafeteria at dinner was quieter than usual, probably still because of what happened that morning, despite Fyodor not being there. Dazai sat alone. He hadn’t tried to sit near anyone and no one tried to sit near him. He ate slowly, steadily. He forced down the bland vegetables, the overcooked rice, the strange gray sliver of fish. His stomach didn’t want it, but he didn’t listen to it. Every bite was part of what he had in mind. Every swallow was a step forward, he cleaned the tray with precision, chewing mechanically; it was clear he wasn’t eating out of hunger, but no one was sharp enough to notice.

When he was done, the cafeteria had mostly cleared out. A few stragglers lingered near the drink station, someone played absently with their napkin, but the worst of the dinner rush had passed. He stood, picked up his tray, and crossed to the counter.

The cook—a middle-aged woman with soft hands and a voice like warm sugar—was already stacking pans near the sink. She looked up when she saw him, surprised, but smiling the way she always did. Gently. Kindly. Like she’d known young men like him before, and didn’t hate them yet. “Was it that good?” she asked lightly, seeing his empty tray.

He smiled, sheepish, a little too fragile around the edges. “Not exactly,” he murmured. “But… I’m still hungry.” 

She paused, one brow lifting just a little. Dazai rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes down. “It’s stupid, but I can’t sleep on an empty stomach,” he added, voice softer now. “Not really. It keeps me up… I was wondering if I could ask for something, some yogurt, maybe.”

The woman nodded once, with the quiet of someone who knew better than to ask too many questions. She stepped to the small fridge beside the staff prep station, opened it, and pulled out a yogurt cup—plain, sealed, cold. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said with a wink, handing it over along with a little spoon. He looked at it like she’d handed him something sacred. “Thank you.” 

“Try and rest tonight,” she replied, already turning back to her work. Dazai tucked the yogurt under his arm, walked slowly back toward the hallway.

It felt heavier than it should’ve.

His footsteps were slow and measured, as though he were pacing out an elaborate chess move in his mind. The yogurt, tucked under his arm, felt as though it contained the entire weight of his decision. He passed the nurse’s station—an empty counter strewn with paperwork, and the closed doors of what used to be the day room, now shuttered for the night. At each display case of announcements and rules, his eyes skimmed without seeing. His thoughts were elsewhere, circling the same cold logic: the cook had been perfect. Too soft in her tone. Too willing to trust. With her silver-streaked hair pinned back in a tidy bun, she had reminded him of someone’s grandmother—warm, patient, unassuming. A woman who wouldn’t question a hungry boy, even at odd hours. Even if that boy was Dazai Osamu.

He had watched her during lunchtime, from the far end of the line. He had recognized in her the kind of mercy that waits for no reward, and that was exactly what he needed.

The door to Room 16 creaked softly as it opened. Inside, the light was already on, low and warm, the kind of glow meant to soothe, though nothing about the room ever truly did. Fyodor was seated by the window, legs crossed, spine straight as a line of scripture, the Bible was open in his hands, its pages whispering as his thumb idly flicked over a corner, back and forth. He didn’t look up. But Dazai knew he’d seen him.

He closed the door quietly behind him and moved across the room, no words passed between them. Fyodor didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t speak. It was almost worse than being watched.

Dazai stepped over to his nightstand and opened the drawer. He placed the yogurt inside of it gently, carefully, like a piece of the puzzle that had finally arrived. Then he closed the drawer again and sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Outside, the hallway murmured with low voices and the occasional rubber-soled footstep. Routine. Comforting in the way clocks are comforting when they count down to something you already expect.

Eventually, the usual nurse arrived. She knocked once, lightly, then stepped inside without waiting. Same cup, same smile. “Evening, Dazai-san,” she said, voice pleasant, the way one might speak to a harmless cat. “Still doing alright?”

He smiled softly, just enough to suggest warmth. “Mmhm, better now.”

She offered the paper cup with two white pills, and he took them without hesitation. She didn’t ask to check, last night was enough to earn her trust. Either way, it made no difference, because this time Dazai had swallowed. “Thank you,” he said with an easy smile, letting the door close gently once she’d turned away.

Dazai sat motionless for a moment, his smile fading into something thinner. He waited until he couldn’t hear the nurses’ footsteps from the hallway anymore—then, he slowly reached into the drawer. The yogurt cup was still cold against his palm. He slid his hand beneath the thin pillow resting against the headboard. His fingers found what he was looking for immediately: the ten pills he had collected until now. 

Rising, he moved quietly to the bathroom adjoining the room. The faint hum of the lights buzzed softly overhead, the tile floor cold beneath his slippers. He closed the door, it didn’t have a key so it couldn’t be locked, but he wouldn’t have even if he could.

At the sink, he set the yogurt cup down and placed a small spoon beside it. He set the pills down on the smooth surface of the white cabinet beneath the sink, the small white tablets lay in a neat cluster. Dazai picked up the spoon and, with care, pressed its underside against the pills. Slowly, methodically, he ground them down, the tablets crumbling into white powder. When the pills were reduced to dust, he scooped the powder carefully and dropped it into the plain yogurt. Then, with slow, steady strokes, he stirred the mixture, watching the powder dissolve into the creamy white like snow melting on a frozen lake.

Dazai’s hand trembled slightly as he held the spoon poised above the yogurt, the weight of what he was about to do pressing heavily on his chest. Twelve pills. Not a lethal dose, not a sure escape. Just enough to blur the edges, to pull him down into a haze—maybe. He knew the numbers, the statistics, the cold medical facts. Twelve zolpidem wouldn’t guarantee death. It might only lead to a long, drugged sleep, maybe he’d wake up groggy, confused, alone with the same unbearable thoughts waiting for him. He knew how the liver broke down zolpidem, how fast the stomach absorbed it. Knew what level of consciousness a certain milligram count might rob from a person. He knew too much.

It wouldn’t stop his heart. It wouldn’t stop his brain. Maybe if he were smaller. Weaker. Maybe if he hadn’t built such a high tolerance by accident, simply by surviving the other times.

But he couldn’t care about that now.

The thought spiraled deeper: he had already tried so many ways to end the chaos—to find peace or at least a moment without the gnawing weight of existence. Every attempt ended the same—pain, disappointment, survival. The world kept turning, indifferent to his suffering. And with each failure, the void inside him grew, sharper and more merciless.

He glanced at the darkened doorway leading back to the room, imagining Fyodor’s gaze resting on him, silently observing, judging—or perhaps simply knowing. Dazai couldn’t bear the thought of looking into those eyes right now. They felt like the last thread tethering him to this place, this life, this endless cycle of pain and numbness.

His breath hitched, chest tightening as memories of his previous attempts clawed their way up; this will be the fourth time in less than a month.

Slowly, Dazai lifted the spoon to his lips. The coolness touched his tongue, the bitterness mingled with sweetness, and for a heartbeat, everything was still. He swallowed, pausing for a moment before eating the rest.

He sat on the cold bathroom floor, back against the door, spoon cradled in his shaking fingers. The yogurt cup rested on his knee. The quiet hum of the light above him pressed down like static in his skull. His body felt impossibly heavy. Not from the drug yet, but from himself—from the sheer, relentless effort of carrying this mind through another hour, another night. 

I can’t keep doing this.

That was the only thing he knew with clarity. He swallowed another spoonful. And then another.

What if I wake up again? What if I just keep waking up, forever? 

The thought made his stomach twist. Not with fear, with disgust, with exhaustion . His fingers clenched tightly around the cup, knuckles paling. He had lived through so many endings that refused to end. Had been dragged, sedated, resuscitated. Had heard his name called through the fog of overdose by voices that never meant anything after the fact. 

This wasn’t a cry for help. It wasn’t even desperation anymore. It was a routine . A ritual he was sick of rehearsing, but couldn’t stop performing.

His eyes stung. Not from tears, but from the weight pressing behind them. The pressure of emotion dammed up for too long, refusing to burst because what would be the point of crying now? He couldn’t even remember the last time he cried.

He forced down the last bite. The yogurt was gone.

The cup fell from his fingers and rolled a little across the tile before coming to rest beside the sink cabinet. Dazai leaned back against the door, legs stretched out, staring up at the humming light. The drug would begin soon—slowing the thoughts, making the edges of the world go soft and low and meaningless. He welcomed it.

Not because he believed it would kill him, he knew that was unlikely going to happen, but because it might stop him from feeling long enough to rest .

And maybe, if he was lucky—this would be the time it carried him far enough that he wouldn’t come back.

Dazai closed his eyes.

And waited.

Chapter Text

Dazai woke up in pieces.

The room was quiet—dead quiet—and smeared in a dim gray that made it impossible to tell if it was still evening, morning, or somewhere in between. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious. Minutes? A hour? More?

His mouth was dry like paper. Something in his stomach twisted sharply, like a coiled wire pulled too tight, and his head—His head throbbed with a blinding, slow pulse, a rhythmic violence behind his eyes that made it impossible to focus on anything but pain. Cold sweat clung to his skin. His shirt, soaked through at the collar and back, stuck to him uncomfortably.

His stomach twisted on itself like it was trying to gnaw through bone, cramping hard enough to make his chest tighten. There was no time to process it, no moment of breath before the nausea crested. He barely made it to the toilet before vomiting.

The first heave was pure acid. The second brought up the faint taste of whatever pills he hadn’t digested. The third was just air and shaking.

He stayed there a while. Forehead resting against the edge of the sink, cheek pressed to the cool porcelain. Breathing in short, shallow bursts. Sweat dripped from his hairline, down his spine, chilling him to the bone despite the feverish heat blooming in his chest.

His fingers trembled as he wiped his mouth. The mirror above the sink was too high for him to see himself from where he was slumped on the floor. He didn’t try to stand. He didn’t want to know what he looked like.

His body felt wrong. Like his bones were grinding against each other, loose in their sockets. He was dizzy, but not the soft, sleepy kind—more like the floor was tilting, the air too thin. A dry rasp slipped from his throat when he tried to swallow.

Still in the bathroom. Still alone. And alive, of course.

Fuck.

The silence was thick and oppressive, as if the air itself were watching. Every creak in the pipes, every hollow beat of his heart reverberated too loud in his ears. He knew what was coming—knew the cycle by now. The crash. The regret. The shaking. The shame.

He lifted his head slowly, neck stiff like rusted hinges. The door to the bathroom was cracked open. Had it always been?

He didn’t remember.

Had someone come in? Did he dream that? His thoughts were a mess—muddy, scattered like puzzle pieces soaked in water. He tried to piece the evening together but kept losing track, but he couldn’t tell which memories were real and which might have been made up by his own brain.

“...Fyodor?” His voice scraped from his throat like gravel. Barely a whisper. 

Nothing. He waited. One second. Two. Five. 

He dragged his body an inch away from the sink, back scraping against the cold tile wall. It took effort. His limbs felt like they didn’t belong to him. Or like they did, but only barely. As though some thin, unraveling string was keeping them tethered to the rest of him.

“Fyodor?” he tried again, louder this time. Or maybe he just thought it was louder.

There was a pause. Then footsteps. Slow, light, precise. Dazai closed his eyes. Or maybe they rolled back on their own. 

A breath—too quiet to be his own. Then a voice, just behind the cracked door. “You’re not very good at dying.”

Dazai let out a hoarse, humorless sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Don’t sound so disappointed.” Fyodor tilted his head. Dazai could feel the weight of his gaze without looking. “It’s not disappointment,” he said, almost kindly. “Just… curiosity.”

“Then you’re sick,” Dazai muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. “Sicker than I am.”

“I’ve never claimed otherwise.”

Another beat. The chill from the floor was working its way into his spine. He was starting to shiver. “I thought you'd sleep longer,” Fyodor said calmly. “But I suppose your body is still too used to survival.”

That— That made Dazai laugh again. “Lucky me,” he muttered.

There was a long silence. Not an uncomfortable one. Not for Fyodor, at least. “I could call someone,” he offered. “A nurse. The doctor.”

“No.” Dazai’s voice was thin, but definite. He knew what game Fyodor was playing, and Fyodor knew Dazai knew. Fyodor also knew he couldn’t really call someone without making Dazai end up in trouble. His offer was made on purpose, to play with him. “You sure?” He asked.

Dazai didn’t answer. He didn’t have the strength to argue, and he didn’t trust his voice not to crack under the weight of whatever this moment was becoming.

The door creaked open another inch. Then another.

Fyodor stepped in without a sound. His feet made no noise against the tile, and his silhouette in the low light was as thin and deliberate as the rest of him—composed down to the fingertips. He crouched, slowly, beside Dazai’s collapsed frame. “You’re sweating,” he observed, as if it were an academic fact and not a symptom of a failed attempt to leave the world behind. 

Dazai let his head fall back against the wall, eyes half-lidded. “Don’t sound so excited about it.”

Fyodor didn’t smile, but the amusement behind his eyes was clear. “I’m not excited,” he said. A hand reached out, brushed a strand of damp hair from Dazai’s forehead. The touch was cold, just like his hand. Dazai flinched anyway.

“Still so jumpy,” Fyodor murmured, drawing his hand back with a faint tilt of his head. “You try to die, and yet recoil from being touched. Isn’t that interesting?”

“You’re not a person I like being touched by.”

“I’m the only person who’s here.” Fyodor stood. His shadow fell long and uneven across the floor. “You need water,” he said, like he was ordering a drink for someone across a dinner table. “Your body’s tearing itself apart trying to undo your work. Typical.” 

Dazai didn’t respond. He could barely stay upright. The porcelain felt warm now against his cheek, or maybe his fever was just spiking again.

When Fyodor returned, it was with a paper cup and something folded under his arm—a towel, maybe. He crouched again, and this time, Dazai didn’t flinch.

The cup was pressed to his lips. Not roughly, but firmly enough to leave no room for argument. He drank because it was easier than refusing. The water was lukewarm. It tasted like dust. When he finished, Fyodor wiped his mouth with the towel. It was an oddly domestic gesture, precise and unhurried, like he was caring for something breakable but not particularly cherished.

Dazai’s eyes flicked to him, slow and skeptical. “Why are you doing this?” He knew it wasn’t out of kindness, no matter how kind the other tried to be, it was never going to be genuine.

Fyodor looked at him. “Because I want to see what you become,” he said. “You’re unfinished. A half-written suicide note. I find that… compelling.”

“You need better hobbies.”

Fyodor’s lips quirked, almost a smile. “So do you, Osamu, dear. ”

Dazai wanted to tell him to shut up. Or leave. Or better yet, just crawl inside the drain and disappear with the rest of the filth. But his body wouldn’t cooperate, and neither would his pride. So he stayed still, fingers twitching faintly in his lap. He waited until Fyodor moved back, then braced one hand against the sink to push himself upright. His arms trembled with the effort. Every muscle burned like it had been flayed raw, and his legs felt more suggestion than structure. But the alternative was staying where he was, and he couldn’t stand that. 

The mirror caught him as he rose—just a flash of himself. Pale. Sunken-eyed. Mouth red at the edges. Sweat still beading down his neck, collecting in the hollow of his throat. He didn’t look for too long.

Fyodor didn’t offer to help. He just watched, arms folded neatly, posture relaxed as if this were all routine. As if watching Dazai piece himself off a bathroom floor were just another item on his calendar. 

Dazai half-stumbled, half-dragged himself through the door, shoulder grazing the frame on his way out. The room beyond was just as dim, just as silent. The bed looked impossibly far for how close it really was. Still, he moved toward it, one slow, stuttering step at a time. His knees threatened to buckle, and for one nauseating moment he thought they would. But he reached the edge. 

He collapsed more than laid down. The mattress gave beneath him, sheets cool against the overheated skin of his back. He didn’t bother getting under the blanket, he didn’t even think he could.

Fyodor appeared in his peripheral vision, silent as always, and sat on his own bed. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. Just settled in like a shadow refusing to leave.

Dazai blinked up at the ceiling. The air was too still. His stomach had stopped twisting, but the ache remained, a dull and persistent throb beneath his ribs. His pulse skittered under his skin like something half-dead trying to crawl free.

Sleep tugged at him in waves—heavy, drugged, uneven. He let his eyes fall shut. Then open. Then shut again. “You’re not going to say anything?” he murmured, words barely shaped by his dry lips.

Fyodor tilted his head slightly. “Would it change anything?”

Dazai gave the ghost of a laugh—just breath, no sound. “No.”

“Then I’ll spare you the waste of breath. You’re regretting this enough without my help.”

Dazai turned his face toward the wall. The mattress dipped faintly behind him—just a shift of weight. The last thing he felt was Fyodor’s gaze resting on the back of his neck, then the room disappeared.

═════

The next time Dazai opened his eyes, the light was too bright.It wasn’t morning-bright, either. It was the kind of sterile, washed-out midday light that made everything look flat and artificial, like it had been filtered through cheap glass. He blinked against it, squinting at the ceiling. His mouth tasted like metal. His tongue stuck to the roof of it.

There was no clock in the room—not one they were allowed to see, anyway—but he could tell it was late. Too late for breakfast. He didn’t bother checking the time from the clock on the wall. He didn’t bother sitting up yet.

His head still throbbed faintly, but it was manageable now. His thoughts no longer felt like fish wriggling through mud. That was something. 

He turned his head—and saw him. Fyodor, sitting at the desk again, exactly as he had a week before, legs crossed neatly, a chipped ceramic mug cupped between his long fingers. The steam curling from the surface suggested tea. Always tea. Dazai had no idea how he got it this time, and he didn’t care enough to ask. 

Fyodor looked up at the shift of movement. His gaze was level, cool as ever. “Good morning,” he said. 

Dazai groaned and dragged an arm over his face. “What are you doing here?” he mumbled, voice gravelly from sleep and silence.

“I live here,” Fyodor replied, deadpan.

“You know what I mean.”

Fyodor took a sip of his tea. He didn’t answer right away. Dazai hated that—how comfortable he was in the quiet, how he stretched silence like it was something sacred. Eventually, he said, “I didn’t think it wise to leave you alone.”

“Why? Worried I’d try again?” Dazai rolled slowly onto his side, facing away from him. His back ached, his skin felt thin and stretched, but at least he could move without retching now.“Not exactly.” Fyodor’s voice was calm. “More curious to see how you’d wear the aftermath.” Dazai laughed once, bitterly. “You’re a fucking vulture.”

Fyodor smiled faintly, setting the cup down with a soft clink. “Oh, but Dazai, watching you in pieces is half the pleasure.”

Dazai scoffed. “You need a new hobby.”

“You said that yesterday,”

Silence stretched between them—Dazai dragged a hand through his hair, wincing at the sweat-dried tangles near the nape of his neck. “You look like you’ve been enjoying yourself.”

“I have. You’re more interesting when you’re vulnerable.”

That earned him a sharp glance. Dazai swung his legs over the side of the bed, the floor was cold, the tiles biting at his bare feet. “I’m not vulnerable,” he muttered.

Fyodor arched a brow, slow and amused. “You were convulsing on the bathroom floor twelve hours ago.”

Dazai met his gaze fully then—tired, yes, but unflinching. “And yet I’m the one up and walking while you’re still sitting there, sipping tea like a virgin widow.” 

That got a reaction. A slight parting of Fyodor’s lips, “I assure you,” he said, rising with deliberate grace, “I’m not a widow.”

“Then a virgin?”

Fyodor didn’t answer right away, he took his time instead, unhurried, unbothered, that same small smirk playing at the edge of his mouth. “You’re not well enough to be flirting,” he said, voice smooth. Dazai’s smirk widened, even if his posture still slumped. “That’s your takeaway? That I’m flirting?”

“You always flirt when you feel like dying. I’ve noticed.”

“Then I must be irresistible lately?” Dazai stood there for a moment, gaze fixed on the floor, before finally pushing himself upright. His steps weren’t steady, when he reached the other chair—one pushed half a meter from Fyodor’s—he dropped into it with a soft grunt. Fyodor didn’t really look surprised, he watched Dazai with that same poised stillness, fingers curled loosely around the ceramic. The tea still steamed between them. 

Fyodor tilted his head, resting his cheek against his knuckles. “You’re really something,” he said, his voice soft enough to be mistaken for kind. 

Dazai shifted in his chair, angling himself a fraction toward Fyodor without ever quite facing him. His fingers twitched once, then reached out and took the mug from Fyodor’s hand. Fyodor let it go without resistance.

The rim was still warm. Dazai lifted it to his lips, took a slow sip. The flavor was sharp, faintly floral—some bitter imported blend that probably cost more than the nurses made in a week. His mouth lingered on the edge of the cup longer than it needed to.

Fyodor watched him. Quietly, intently. “Second time,” he said, and Dazai glanced at him. “Hm?”

“You’ve shared tea with me twice. From the same cup.” 

“Maybe I was curious what your mouth tasted like.”

Fyodor’s eyes flicked briefly to the mug, then back to Dazai. “You could’ve asked.”

“Mm,” Dazai murmured, setting the cup down on the table. “You’re a real freak, you know that?”

“You’ve said something like that before.”

“You’re obsessed.” He leaned a bit towards the other.

Fyodor let that hang. “You say that like it’s not the reason you’re still talking to me.”

Dazai’s lips curved, faintly. “You’re not even denying it.”

“I don’t see the point.”

Dazai was closer now—just a breath away, he could see the detail in Fyodor’s lashes, the clean line of his mouth. “You know, I never liked you.”

Fyodor’s eyes flicked down to his mouth, then back up, deliberate. “You’re leaning in.” Despite that, he didn’t move an inch. He tilted his chin and Dazai leaned the rest of the way, closing the distance between them.

Fyodor’s mouth was cold, but not unpleasant. Dazai’s was dry, tinged with bitterness from the tea. They hovered for a beat longer than necessary—enough to make it real, not enough to make it romantic. When their lips parted, Fyodor didn’t look smug, he looked kind of curious. 

Dazai licked his lips, blinked once, and leaned back an inch. “Well,” he said, voice low. “That happened.”

Fyodor’s smile was barely there. “Was it worth the taste?” Dazai didn’t answer at first. He just glanced back at the mug, then at Fyodor’s mouth, and finally met his eyes again. “I think I prefer the tea.”

Fyodor laughed, quiet and dry. 

And for the first time that morning, Dazai didn’t feel quite so hollow.

Dazai stood slowly, joints stiff from too many hours curled awkwardly in bed. He didn’t look at Fyodor as he straightened his shirt. His voice, when it came, was almost casual. “I should eat something before the nurses start pitying me again.”

Fyodor’s gaze followed him, but he said nothing. Just watched. As if cataloguing the subtle tremor in Dazai’s knees, the way he braced himself briefly on the chair’s back before letting go.

Dazai stepped to the door, pulling it shut behind him. Lunch would be the same as always—overcooked rice, limp vegetables, something pretending to be protein. He wasn’t hungry, not really. But the ache in his ribs wasn’t going to vanish on its own, and he’d already had enough of dying every week.

═════

The next day came without much more happening, and Dazai couldn’t tell whether he was relieved about it or not. Friday. It was always a little quieter on Fridays. The staff moved slower, more casually. Patients kept half an eye on the clock, counting down hours until the weekend schedule—longer outdoor time, fewer group sessions, and, most importantly, fewer mandatory check-ins. 

But not for him.

Dazai knocked once before pushing the door open, Ootake’s office looked exactly as it had on Tuesday. Dr. Ootake glanced up from his notes. “Good morning, Dazai-san,” he said, calm and even as always. “How are you feeling today?”

Dazai dropped into the chair across from him, folding his arms and letting his head tilt just enough to make it look like a chore. “Still alive,” he said, with the same flippant air he always used. “That counts for something, right?”

Ootake tapped something onto the tablet without looking down. “Sleep?”

“Some.”

“Appetite?”

“Relative.”

He made a soft sound in his throat that wasn’t quite agreement but also wasn’t surprise. “Any thoughts of self-harm since our last session?”

Dazai’s mouth twitched. “Define ‘thoughts.’”

Ootake didn’t react. “We’ll come back to that.”

They went through the routine: medication compliance, physical symptoms, the frequency and nature of his intrusive thoughts. Dazai gave vague but mostly honest answers, more cooperative than usual. Maybe because he was tired. Or maybe because there was something else waiting behind his teeth.

Ootake gave him the space to get there.

Minutes passed. The silence stretched in a practiced way—not like Fyodor’s silences, which were always loaded , always a blade against the ribs. Ootake’s was clinical, contained.

Eventually, Dazai exhaled, slow. “Can I tell you something without you giving me the look ?”

Ootake glanced up, mildly. “Which look is that?”

Silence again. But this time it belonged to Dazai. He shifted slightly, letting one arm drop to the side, fingers curling loosely against his thigh. 

“I kissed him.” He didn’t look at Ootake when he said it, he didn’t need to specify who he kissed, Ootake knew.

A beat. Then another.

“I see,” Ootake said, careful. “When did this happen?”

“Yesterday morning. After I woke up.” His voice was too casual, like he wasn’t sure if it mattered or if it was just another strange footnote in a long list of questionable decisions. “It wasn’t… a thing. Just—happened.”

“Who initiated it?”

Dazai hesitated. “Technically me. But he didn’t stop me. He didn’t move.”

“Did you want him to?”

Another pause. Then a sigh. “No.”

Ootake gave that a moment to sit before asking, “And how did you feel afterward?”

Dazai’s mouth twisted. “I told him I preferred the tea.”

The psychiatrist nodded slowly, watching him. “But how did you feel?”

Dazai scoffed lightly. “You think I kissed him because I like him?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re wondering.”

“I’m wondering what it meant to you ,” Ootake said simply. “Not what it should mean.”

That gave Dazai pause. His gaze dropped to the floor. He swallowed.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It was just… something to do.”

Ootake nodded again, gently. “That makes sense.”

Dazai ran a hand through his hair, fingers catching on the tangles near the nape. “Don’t tell the nurses.”

“I won’t,” Ootake said. “Unless I have a reason to.”

“I’m not going to throw myself off the roof just because I kissed a psychopath.”

Ootake didn’t write that down immediately. He let the word hang in the air, let Dazai hear it again in the silence that followed. Then: “Is that how you see him?”

Dazai gave a short laugh, dry and brittle. “I mean, it’s not exactly just me, is it? The guy reads the Bible like it’s a manifesto and stares at people like he’s waiting for them to crack open.” He shrugged. “Call it a working theory.”

Still, Ootake didn’t comment. His pen hovered once, then set back down gently. “Why that word, though?” he asked instead, his tone easy, non-confrontational. “You could’ve said he was weird. Or intense. Detached. But you chose psychopath .”

Dazai shifted in his chair. “Would you prefer I called him a ‘high-functioning, morally ambiguous eccentric with trust issues’?”

“That’s a mouthful,” Ootake said, mild.

“I’m generous like that.”

“But it wasn’t a joke when you said it,” Ootake added, softly.

Dazai didn’t reply at once. He picked at a loose thread on the cuff of his shirt, then pulled his hand away before it unraveled more. “…He’s not violent,” he said eventually. “Not like people expect. He’s quiet. Polite, even. He doesn’t yell or throw things or even raise his voice. But he doesn’t care. About anyone. Not really.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I’ve seen it.” Dazai’s eyes flicked up. “You talk to him, and he watches you like he’s waiting to be entertained. Or bored. Or both. Nothing gets through. And the more I push, the more he just lets me. Like I could say the worst thing in the world and he’d be curious , not offended.”

Ootake leaned back slightly, absorbing that. “And yet,” he said after a moment, “you kissed him.”

Dazai smirked faintly. “Yeah. That’s the part I can’t explain.”

“You’ve been roommates for almost three weeks. Has he ever tried to hurt you?”

“No.”

“Threaten you?”

“No.”

“Manipulate you?”

That one gave Dazai pause.

“…Define manipulate.”

Ootake waited. Dazai tilted his head, considering, but didn’t answer. “So,” the doctor said slowly, “you’re still not sure what he wants from you.”

Dazai’s expression didn’t change, but something in his shoulders went still.

“Maybe he doesn’t want anything,” he muttered.

“And maybe that’s what worries you.”

Silence again. This one stretched longer than the others. Finally, Dazai exhaled, long and quiet. “I just don’t like not knowing where I stand with people like that.”

“You think you’re not one of them?”

That earned the smallest twitch of a smile. “You’re the one with the clipboard.”

Ootake didn’t smile back. The clock ticked softly behind them. Session time was almost up, but the doctor didn’t signal it. Not yet.

“Did kissing him make you feel less lonely?” he asked, voice as quiet as the question itself.

Dazai hesitated. “No.”

Then, with a softer breath: “Only for a minute.”

Ootake nodded once and finally clicked his pen closed. “Alright.” Dazai looked up, faintly surprised. “That’s it?”

“For now.”

Dazai stood. As he turned toward the door, Ootake added, “You said you don’t like not knowing where you stand.” Dazai paused.

“Maybe ask him.”

The brunette scoffed, hand on the doorknob. “You make it sound simple.”

“Sometimes it is,” Ootake said. “Sometimes people are waiting for someone else to go first.”

Dazai didn’t answer. He opened the door and stepped out. He knew perfectly well Fyodor wasn’t waiting for him ‘to go first.’

The hallway was quiet on his way back. Dazai walked with his hands in his pockets, shoulder brushing faintly against the peeling paint of the wall every few steps. He didn’t rush. He never did. But his thoughts moved faster than his feet—tangled and insistent.

When he reached room 16, he paused with his fingers on the door. Not because he was hesitating—he didn’t hesitate—but because something inside him braced automatically. Like he was walking back into a room wired with thin tripwire threads. Invisible. Arbitrary. One shift too much, and—

He pushed the door open.

Fyodor was exactly where he expected him to be: curled up on his own bed, spine resting against the wall, book in hand. Bible again. He didn’t look up at first.

Dazai shut the door behind him, deliberately louder than necessary. “Good morning, sunshine.”

Fyodor’s eyes flicked up, “it’s afternoon.”

“Don’t be pedantic,” Dazai said mildly. He crossed the room, not to his bed but to the window, his mind was still halfway back in that office. Did kissing him make you feel less lonely? Only for a minute.

The answer was honest. Unfortunately.

Fyodor turned a page. “Did the doctor give you any clarity on your deep, unresolved inner torment?” Dazai smiled without teeth. “Nah. But I’m thinking of starting a newsletter.”

“I’ll unsubscribe.”

“You’d miss me.”

Fyodor didn’t answer. He only blinked, and Dazai couldn’t tell if it was condescension or amusement—or if Fyodor even bothered to distinguish the two.

Dazai let the silence sit for a beat. Then, casually: “So. Are we pretending yesterday didn’t happen?”

Fyodor closed the Bible carefully, one finger marking the page. “Would you prefer we discuss it at length?”

Dazai leaned back against the window, arms folded loosely. “I’d prefer not having to guess.”

“I told you,” Fyodor said, tone flat but not cold. “You were the one who leaned in.”

“You let me.”

“I didn’t stop you.”

“That’s the same thing.”

Fyodor raised a shoulder. “Is it?”

Dazai’s jaw tightened for a fraction of a second. Then he looked away, out the window, where the courtyard was bathed in anemic sunlight. A nurse wheeled someone past the benches. “You’re really something, you know that?”

“I’ve heard.”

Dazai looked back at him, gaze sharper now. “You’re not curious?”

“I am,” Fyodor admitted. “But not in the way you want me to be.”

That stung more than it should’ve. Dazai didn’t show it. “And how do I want you to be?”

“Human,” Fyodor said simply. “Predictable. Soft in the places you’re hoping to dig your fingers into.”

The words landed like clean incisions. Dazai didn’t reply. He moved to his bed instead, dropping into the sheets with a muted sigh.

“Are you going to do it again?” Fyodor asked, almost idly. Dazai blinked, turning his head. “Do what?”

Fyodor met his gaze, he sounded frustratingly calm. “Kiss me.”

Dazai stared at him. For once, no comeback sprang to his tongue. Then he laughed. 

“Let me know if you want to do it again,” Fyodor said after a moment. “I won’t move then either.”

“…What if I want you to move?” he asked, voice low. Fyodor didn’t answer. But Dazai knew he heard it.

And he also knew that Fyodor knew he didn’t mean it. That was fine.

Dazai lay still for a moment, staring up at the ceiling. He’d stared at it so many nights it barely registered anymore. Fyodor’s presence did. So did his words. ‘Let me know if you want to do it again. I won’t move then either.’

But the thing was, Fyodor liked control. And Dazai didn’t need to take it, he just needed to tilt it.

A slow breath left his lungs. He shifted onto his side and propped himself up on one elbow. Fyodor hadn’t resumed reading. He was still watching him—blankly, maybe. But watching. 

“I’ve been thinking,” Dazai said at last. His voice was light again, deceptively idle. “About what you said.” Fyodor didn’t blink. “You’ll have to be more specific. I say a great many things.”

Dazai smiled faintly. “About me wanting you to be human. Predictable. Soft.”

The other tilted his head a fraction.

“You act like I’m the one asking for something unreasonable.” Dazai shifted again, slow and lazy, like a cat stretching in warm light. “But I think you’ve got it backwards.”

“Oh?”

Dazai tilted his head toward him lazily. “It’s cute, actually. You spend so much effort staying untouched, but I think you forgot to ask whether anyone wanted to touch you in the first place.”

Fyodor blinked slowly. “Are you accusing me of loneliness?”

“I’m not accusing you,” Dazai said with a faint smile. “I’m reminding you. That whatever you think this is—this game of patient disinterest—you wouldn’t even have the luxury of playing it if I wasn't the dysfunctional, ‘suicidal’ man I am.”

Fyodor’s brows knit, just barely. There it was.

Dazai stood and walked the three steps towards the other’s bed. He stood in front of Fyodor and looked down at him. “You keep reading the Bible like it’s going to save you from this,” he said, voice barely above a murmur. “But even God couldn’t help himself. He had to make something in his image. Just so he wouldn’t be alone.”

Fyodor’s breath came in through his nose, shallow. The line of his throat moved.

Dazai leaned down—not touching, not yet—and added, voice lower now, “I think you like that I’m hard to predict. I think it scares you.”

Fyodor’s gaze didn’t waver. “You think too much.”

“And you pretend not to.” Dazai smiled, then shifted suddenly—bracing a hand on the wall just beside Fyodor’s head as he leaned in, close enough that he could feel the other’s breath.

This time, Fyodor didn’t hide his reaction. His eyes narrowed, lips parting just slightly. Dazai’s voice was silk. “You asked if I’d kiss you again.”

Fyodor stayed silent.

“I might,” Dazai whispered, his mouth nearly brushing Fyodor’s now. 

Fyodor’s mouth curved, “you might ?” he echoed, voice mild. “How generous.”

Dazai’s breath hitched—barely, just enough to betray that he felt the shift in the other’s tone—but he held his position inches apart. Fyodor tilted his chin, the space between their lips narrowing by a single, cruel millimeter. “What do you think it would mean if I kissed you back?”

“I think,” Dazai murmured, “it would mean you’re more human than you pretend.”

“And if I don’t?”

Dazai’s eyes half-lidded, lashes lowering. “Then I’ll know you’re lying to yourself.”

Fyodor chuckled, low, quiet and infuriating . “You’re always trying to peel the skin off things, aren’t you?” He brought one hand up and brushed a single knuckle along Dazai’s jaw. “You talk about loneliness like you don’t spend every night aching from it.”

“I’d rather crack my skull than fall into your arms.”

A pause.

Fyodor smiled, slow and mean. “Liar.”

Dazai’s fingers twitched at his side. Then he shifted forward, a controlled spill of weight into Fyodor’s space—letting one knee settle onto the mattress beside him, then the other, until he was straddling him without quite sitting down. His body hovered just above Fyodor’s lap, arms braced on either side of the man’s head. The wall still behind him, Fyodor didn’t move. But his fingers curled minutely against the bedsheet.

The air between them tightened.

“You always look like you know what’s going to happen,” Dazai murmured. “But I don’t think you expected this.”

Fyodor’s eyes slid from Dazai’s mouth to his eyes, calculating. “Did you?”

Dazai smiled without warmth. “I don’t have to. I just have to be close enough to watch you slip.”

Fyodor’s hand rose again, slower this time, and pushed Dazai’s hair back behind his ear—grazing the shell of it in a way that could’ve been affectionate, if it wasn’t him doing it. “You think you’re not already falling?”

“I know exactly where I’m standing,” Dazai replied. “And I’m the one leaning forward, aren’t I?” His weight dipped a little as he said it, his hips brushing lightly against Fyodor’s, Just enough to feel the subtle twitch of reaction beneath him—tense, involuntary. Fyodor’s breath caught the way a violin string does when plucked at the wrong angle. 

“You’re good at staying still,” Dazai murmured. “But you’re not calm , are you?”

Fyodor’s fingers twitched again, this time not in the sheets but at Dazai’s thigh, like his body had moved on instinct before he could think better of it. Dazai’s smile didn’t falter. His mouth dipped lower, hovering just beside Fyodor’s ear. “I could feel it,” he whispered. “When I leaned in. You didn’t move—but everything under your skin did.”

Fyodor’s head tipped faintly to the side, exposing more of his neck, like a knifeblade turning itself toward the cut. He didn’t speak. Dazai dragged his lips across the edge of Fyodor’s jaw, his breath left a warm trail in its wake. “Tell me something honest… not for me, for you.” he said softly, letting his hips lower a little more into his lap. “Do you want me to stop?”

Fyodor’s breath faltered once again. His eyes searched Dazai’s—frustratingly blank and sharp at once, like he was parsing a riddle that wouldn’t solve. “No,” he said finally.

Dazai’s smile turned softer. “Didn’t think so.” Then, finally , he kissed him—not rough, not rushed, his fingers slid into Fyodor’s hair as their mouths met, hips sinking fully into place now, anchoring him there. His body melted into the bed and into him.

When he pulled back, breathless and flush-eyed, he whispered, “You don’t scare me, Fyodor.” 

Dazai’s mouth found Fyodor’s again, open now, his tongue teasing against the other’s. Fyodor’s fingers moved, curling around Dazai’s hips, dragging him down flush to his own lap. Dazai let himself be moved, breath hitching faintly as his body settled fully against the growing hardness beneath him. He didn’t resist. Instead, he shifted—grinding down slowly, deliberately, just enough for pressure to catch, build, pull a low exhale from Fyodor’s mouth into his own. 

Fyodor’s grip tightened, elegant hands guiding Dazai’s rhythm as his hips rolled in practiced waves, each movement stoking friction that burned hot through cloth.

Dazai’s lashes fluttered. He broke the kiss to catch his breath, only to press his lips along Fyodor’s jaw, then his neck—slow trails of heat and reverence, a worship he’d never speak aloud.

A pale hand slid beneath Dazai’s shirt, fingers cold against warm skin, and pressed flat against the curve of his back, guiding him forward as Fyodor’s other hand moved to cup Dazai’s jaw. He kissed him again, deeper this time. Dazai opened easily for him, the wet heat of his mouth answering every push of tongue with a hum low in his throat.

The shift came fast after that.

Fyodor’s hands moved,undoing the buttons of Dazai’s shirt methodically. His fingers brushed bare skin, brushing knuckles along ribs, over his chest.

Dazai flinched slightly at the contact, but he didn’t stop him. Instead, he pulled back just enough to help tug the shirt over his shoulders, shrugging it off with a breathless, crooked grin. 

“You’re so precise,” Dazai said, voice low, lashes heavy as he looked down at him. “Like you’re dissecting me.”

“Would you like me to?” Fyodor replied simply. He sat up in one fluid motion, shifting Dazai more fully into his lap. Then his hands moved down, gripping the back of Dazai’s thighs and pulling—just slightly, but enough to draw a soft gasp from Dazai’s mouth as their hips met again, harder this time. Dazai braced himself against the other’s shoulders, he didn’t resist when Fyodor pushed him back.

The mattress dipped beneath him, and he let himself fall into it, his brown hair splayed over the pillow. Fyodor rose above him, his fingers trailed down Dazai’s stomach, brushing along the waistband of his pants. Dazai watched him with a look that was nearly smug—but his breath was coming fast now, his chest rising. “Fuck—you’re getting good at this.”

“Or maybe I was always good?” Fyodor smiled, before one hand slipped between them to palm Dazai through his pants. The brunette sucked in air, hips stuttering at the contact. Fyodor didn’t stroke,he just held him, firm, fingers curling possessively over the shape of his cock like he was his already. 

Dazai shifted into the pressure, wanting more, but Fyodor held him in place and tugged the waistband down. Dazai lifted his hips enough to help, breath uneven, chest flushed and heaving as his cock sprung free—hard and already leaking. Fyodor took his time looking at him. “You’re already this hard,” he murmured, thumb brushing the head, smearing precum across sensitive skin. “And I haven’t even touched you properly.”

Dazai shuddered. “Then do it.” His thighs spread without instruction, baring himself completely.

“So eager.” Fyodor’s fingers wrapped slowly around Dazai’s shaft, stroking him slowly. He watched the way Dazai’s lips parted, the way his eyes fluttered shut for a moment under the rhythm. Each upward drag of Fyodor’s fist was just tight enough, slow enough to make the brunette’s hips twitch in search of more.

“You like the way I look at you, don’t you?” Fyodor murmured, thumb rolling just beneath the head, coaxing a broken sound from Dazai’s throat. 

“I like when you stop pretending you're unaffected.”

Fyodor grinned. “Then you’ll love this.”

He let go just long enough to shift back, his long fingers moving to his own waistband. When Fyodor pushed his own pants down, his cock sprang free—pale, flushed, and already hard. Dazai’s gaze dropped to it for a half-second before lifting again, meeting Fyodor’s eyes.

Fyodor reached for him again, he gripped both of them in one hand, Dazai’s cock pressed against his own, sliding together slick with precum. The contact forced a low, involuntary moan from Dazai’s throat. Fyodor began to stroke them both, his hand moving in steady, firm pumps.

Dazai’s head fell back against the pillow, legs spread wide, helpless now against the burn of pleasure building fast in his gut. Fyodor leaned down, his breath brushing hot over Dazai’s jaw as he worked them with mechanical precision.

“Fuck, Fyodor—” the brunette whimpered, unable to hold back the sound. 

“I know,” Fyodor whispered, voice close to his ear now. “You feel it too.” He angled his hips slightly, dragging himself harder along Dazai’s cock with each stroke. Their skin was slick, every slide of his palm sending another tremor through Dazai’s core.

“You’re—hnn—such a fucking bastard,” Dazai gasped, hips lifting, chasing more.  His hands reached up, grabbing Fyodor’s shoulders, digging nails in just faintly as he gasped through clenched teeth. “God—keep going—” 

Fyodor kissed him again, swallowing every curse, every moan, even as his hand sped up just slightly, working them together in tandem. Dazai arched under him, grinding up shamelessly now, chasing every wave of pressure, of friction, of pleasure. He was close—so close it hurt. His body trembled beneath Fyodor’s, muscles tensed, breath coming in short, desperate gasps. Every drag of Fyodor’s hand along both their cocks pushed him closer to the edge, the pressure rising in his spine.

His hands were fisted in the sheets now, his hips twitching with every slick grind, every maddening stroke. “Fyodor—” he gasped, voice high, fraying. “I’m gonna—”

But Fyodor stopped.

The motion halted mid-stroke, and before Dazai could process it, the hand wrapped around them was gone. The sudden absence of friction was cruel. Dazai let out a strangled sound, a choked, furious whine of disbelief. His hips rolled up into nothing, aching for the touch that had been there just seconds before.

“You bastard, ” he started, wrecked and breathless, eyes wide. “You—”

“You never said anything about letting you finish.” Fyodor murmured, brushing a thumb over Dazai’s lower lip, silencing him. The brunette made a noise—half growl, half a laugh—as his head fell back into the pillow. His body was burning, still pulsing, the ache between his legs still unbearable. “You are evil, ” he hissed.

“Maybe,” Fyodor said softly, he didn’t mind the label at all. His hand returned to Dazai’s thigh, “You were going to come too easily. That wouldn’t do.”

“You’re a fucking —” Dazai’s voice cracked into a groan, one arm thrown over his eyes now. His cock twitched, flushed and aching, slick with precum and throbbing for attention. “God—please—”

Fyodor leaned down again, brushing his lips just beneath Dazai’s ear. “You begged so easily.” 

“I didn’t beg.”

“You are begging,” Fyodor murmured. His hand slid lower, teasing along Dazai’s inner thigh—just barely not touching him. “You want it so badly you’d let me ruin you for it.”

Dazai’s breath hitched again. “Yes. Whatever you call it, just —”

The words barely left his mouth before Fyodor kissed him again—this time rougher, more possessive, tongue claiming, teeth catching. And as he kissed him, his hand wrapped around both their cocks again—slick, firm, merciless.

The friction returned like a slap. Dazai moaned into his mouth, hips thrusting up immediately, chasing every stroke now like his sanity depended on it. Fyodor gave him no time to catch breath or thought. He fucked them both with his hand, dragging their lengths together in a rhythm that was harder now, tighter, stroking just under the head and twisting slightly on the way up.

Dazai’s body was trembling, overstimulated from denial and desperate for relief. His mouth hung open, panting, his lips red and spit-slick. Fyodor broke the kiss to look down at him.

“You’ll come when I tell you to,” he murmured, and squeezed hard , right beneath the tip.

Dazai cried out, but he didn’t argue, he just nodded, barely.

“Say it,” Fyodor whispered, voice silk and steel.

“I’ll—I’ll come when you tell me to,” Dazai choked, and Fyodor kissed him again as reward, then stroked down once more. 

Dazai's voice broke around the kiss, every moan swallowed, every gasp turned into a trembling plea caught between their mouths. Fyodor didn’t slow, his grip remained punishing, the rhythm relentless, every drag of slick skin to skin building faster, harder, until Dazai was writhing beneath him, helpless in the heat pooling in his gut.

“You feel it building again,” Fyodor murmured against his lips, not a question. “Don’t you?”

“Yes—yes, fuck—”

“But you’ll wait,” Fyodor whispered, the tip of his tongue flicking over Dazai’s lower lip. “You’ll hold it for me.”

Dazai moaned, a sound of pure anguish. His hips jerked up involuntarily, chasing every stroke like it was air, Fyodor’s hand was ruthless now, working them with tight, twisting strokes that wrung sharp gasps and shudders from the other’s body.

“I—can’t—” Dazai’s voice broke again, “I’m gonna—Fyodor, please—please—” A sharp, punishing twist beneath the head made him cry out again, tears forming at the corners of his eyes from sheer frustration. “You’ll wait,” Fyodor repeated calmly, biting his way along Dazai’s jawline now, slow and possessive. “Or I’ll stop again.”

That got him. Dazai’s whole body tensed, breath catching on a sob of restraint. His cock throbbed violently in Fyodor’s grip, but he forced himself still, trembling as he nodded, chest rising in sharp, shallow gasps. 

“That’s it,” Fyodor purred, brushing his thumb over the slit again, smearing him with their combined precum. “You’re such a good toy when you’re obedient.”

Then, finally, finally—

“You can come.”

Dazai’s body snapped taut, his mouth falling open in a soundless cry as he came hard—cock twitching in Fyodor’s grip, spilling between them in hot, white pulses that smeared over both his belly and Fyodor’s hand. 

His whole body jerked with it, wave after wave dragging through him, until he was gasping, shuddering, twitching with aftershocks.

Fyodor didn’t stop.

He kept stroking through it, kept grinding against him, watching with a cold kind of fascination as Dazai writhed, overstimulated and raw. He was slick with sweat, cock still twitching against Fyodor’s, leaking and flushed red.

But Fyodor hadn’t come yet. And Dazai felt it when he did.

With a low, guttural sound Fyodor thrust against him again, and again, chasing his release now, his hand was still wrapped around both of them, tight, pumping fast and slick, and then he broke.

He came with a ragged breath, teeth clenched against Dazai’s shoulder as his body jerked, cock pulsing between them. Hot cum smeared across the other’s stomach.

Fyodor’s breath came fast and harsh against Dazai’s throat, fingers twitching as he squeezed through the last few strokes. 

Silence fell. Only the sound of their panting filled the space. The scent of sex, sweat, hung thick in the air. Dazai looked up at Fyodor with a flushed, wrecked expression. “Was that—control kink,” he slurred, voice hoarse, “or do you just like torturing me?”

Fyodor gave a low hum, wiping his hand across Dazai’s stomach, gathering the mess slowly. His fingers were wet with it as he brought them to Dazai’s lips. “Does it matter?”

Dazai parted his mouth instinctively, letting Fyodor slip his fingers in, sucking them clean. Fyodor smiled, pleased. “You're beautiful like this.” He watched him like a collector might admire a painting ruined by its own beauty.

“Good,” He said softly, withdrawing his fingers with a faint, wet sound. He dragged them down Dazai’s chin, leaving a smear of spit shining faintly under the light. “You’re so quick to obey once I’ve broken you open.”

Dazai exhaled a breathless laugh, eyes glazed. “You think I’m broken?”

 Fyodor leaned in, mouth brushing the corner of his jaw, his voice low and silken. “No. I think you were born like this.” 

Dazai twitched under him—just a small movement, a half-second of visible discomfort, and Fyodor caught it. His gaze turned surgical, as if he were peeling back skin just to see what Dazai flinched at. “Did that hit a nerve?” he murmured, almost curiously. “Does it scare you that someone might see you as you are?”

Dazai didn’t answer at first. His lashes flickered, breath shallow as Fyodor’s words sank in. He stared at the wall like it might offer him a script, a way out of the quiet now folding over them.

“I think,” Dazai said finally, “that people only ever see what they want.”

 “Perhaps, but I see what’s in front of me.”

That earned a quiet sound from Dazai—half a laugh. His eyes closed for a moment, “I should…” He trailed off, voice hoarse, raw around the edges. Then he cleared his throat, shifting beneath Fyodor’s weight. “I should clean up before dinner.”

Fyodor didn’t move. He tilted his head slightly, eyes looking down the length of Dazai’s body—ruined and beautiful, flushed and shining with remnants of what they'd just done.

“You should,” he agreed softly. “You’re a mess.”

Dazai gave another dry, breathless laugh. “Takes one to know one.”

Chapter Text

The lights in the cafeteria still buzzed behind his eyes as Dazai pushed open the door to room 16. He exhaled slowly, his hand still resting on the handle. The room was dim—Fyodor had already turned on the bedside lamp, casting a low amber glow that made the pale walls look almost gold. Almost warm. 

Fyodor sat by the window, chair angled just enough to suggest he’d been watching the sky again. Or waiting.

“Dinner was a masterpiece,” Dazai said dryly as he kicked off his shoes, “they’ve outdone themselves with the saltless rice this time.”

“Saltless rice is better for digestion,” Fyodor said, without even looking at him. “You should try to eat more.”

“Maybe you should try eating more yourself.” Dazai scoffed as he flopped backward onto the bed with a groan, arms outstretched like he’d just finished a marathon. The springs creaked under him, but he didn’t shift. His eyes tracked the ceiling, unfocused. 

“What do you and Dr. Ootake talk about when it’s regarding me?”

Dazai’s head tilted slightly toward the window, toward Fyodor, though he didn’t sit up. “Mmm. That’s an interesting question, I thought you’d know the answer already. Is this jealousy?”

“I’m asking anyway.” Fyodor ignored the last question, knowing it was just asked to tease him. 

The brunette folded one arm beneath his head. “Depends on the day,” he said. “He asks some questions, I give some answers, sometimes I mean them, sometimes I don’t.”

Fyodor’s lips curved faintly, “I see.” He was quiet for a moment. 

“Did he tell you?”

Dazai blinked. “Tell me what?”

“Your diagnosis,”

“No.”

Fyodor tilted his head. “Of course not. It’s normal. Doctors here aren’t exactly supposed to tell their patients. Sometimes hearing it only reinforces the fracture, it interferes with the healing process.”

Dazai watched him for a long moment, wondering for a second how Fyodor knew all that, but yet again, it’s Fyodor. He probably had a reason he told him this for.

“But you’re not here to heal, are you? You made that very clear yourself.”

Dazai let out a soft laugh, that was true, no reason to deny it.

The conversation drifted away, but the echo of it didn’t. Dazai stared up at the ceiling, as usual, thinking about the other’s words. 

He knows too much about what the doctors say. About what they don’t say. About what’s written in files I’ll never see.  

His brow furrowed, just faintly.

Did he bring up the diagnosis to deflect me from his own? The idea lodged itself deeper, stubbornly. He hadn’t thought about it before, he hadn’t considered what they might have scrawled under Fyodor Dostoevsky’s name, behind all the locked cabinets and clipped words. What would they call him?

That reminded him of one of their first conversations, when he asked Fyodor about his diagnosis to tease him. He wasn’t actually serious with his guess.

“Mmm… control issues. Definitely. Perfectionist. You have that whole ‘cold psychopath’ vibe, which is kind of fun. Probably high-functioning, but a nightmare behind closed doors.” Is what he had told Fyodor weeks ago, but now, the term ‘psychopath’ was starting to make sense, to fit his perception of the man.

Dazai swallowed, his throat felt tight. He told himself it didn’t matter, that he didn’t care. But his mind wouldn’t stop circling it. Why did he bring it up now? Why plant that seed unless he wanted me to wonder?

He shifted on the mattress, pulling one arm over his eyes to block out the amber glow. But even in the dark behind his eyelids, Fyodor’s words stayed. 

═════

The first light of dawn slipped through the thin curtains, Dazai stirred, the sheets twisted around his legs, hair a disheveled halo against the pillow. For a moment, he didn’t move. He listened to the soft creak of the building settling, to the murmur of voices in the hall. And then to the quiet, steady rhythm of another’s breath.

His gaze slid sideways.

Fyodor was still by the window, though now he was leaning back in the chair. He looked like he hadn’t moved from there all night, but there was no way that was possible.

Dazai exhaled slowly, even though the unease from the night before hadn’t gone, not entirely. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet meeting cold tile. His head tipped back against the headboard for a second as his eyes found Fyodor again.

The brunette rubbed at the back of his neck, a humorless smile tugging at his lips. “Morning surveillance,” he hummed.

Fyodor’s gaze flicked to him at that, “surveillance?” he repeated softly, the corner of his mouth curving. “If that’s what you’d like to call it.”

“You look like you sat there all night watching me breathe, and I’m the one with issues?”

“On the contrary,” Fyodor murmured, tipping his head back toward the window, “it’s reassuring. To see you still breathing.”

Dazai huffed out a laugh, scrubbing a hand over his face. “You really know how to make a guy feel safe, you know that?”

Then, with a soft groan, he stood, running a hand through his hair until it stuck up even worse, then tugged on his shoes. He didn’t bother saying he’d be back, it was routine anyway. 

By the time he reached the cafeteria, the hum of low conversation had started to build. He scanned the room once, eyes skipping over the familiar shapes of other patients, before locking onto a table near the far end. Atsushi was there, as usual—head down over a bowl of oatmeal, shoulders a little hunched, as if trying to make himself smaller in the echoing space. Dazai let his tray clatter onto the table before sliding into the seat across from him.

Atsushi startled slightly, his eyes looked up in surprise before softening. “Morning,” he said quietly.

“Morning,” Dazai echoed, drawing out the word like he might make a joke out of it—but didn’t. Instead, he stabbed idly at the bland rice on his tray, pretending to think. In truth, he knew exactly why he’d sat here that morning.

Atsushi glanced around, then back at him. “You’re… uh. Sitting here again.” 

“You sound surprised.” The brunette smiled faintly. “Maybe I’m just drawn to your sunny personality.”

The boy huffed a nervous laugh, rubbing at the back of his neck. They sat in silence for a few minutes, the low buzz of other conversations filled the space. Then Dazai spoke again, softer this time, like he was asking something offhand when it wasn’t offhand at all. “You’ve been here a while, right?”

“Um… yeah. A few months, I guess.” Atsushi’s brows drew together.

“Long enough to figure out how this place works.” Dazai’s chopsticks hovered over his tray. His tone stayed casual, but his eyes were sharp, fixed on Atsushi’s. “Long enough to know where they keep the interesting things.”

“The… interesting things?”

Dazai leaned back slightly in his chair, tilting his head. “You know. Documents. Files. The places where they write down what they don’t say to you.”

Atsushi blinked, obviously caught off guard. “You mean—patient files? Why do you want to know?”

“Curiosity,” Dazai said, his tone was bright and falsely innocent. Atsushi hesitated, then he cautiously whispered. “There’s a records room on the lower floor. I’ve seen my doctor go there once. It’s behind the hallway near the staff wing—north side. But the doors are always locked.”

“Of course they are.” Dazai smiled, more to himself than him. “Do you know who has keys?”

“No. But…” the boy looked conflicted. “One of the orderlies is new. I’ve seen him drop his keys before, maybe any of the orderlies’ keys will do?” 

Dazai nodded slowly, that smile never quite leaving his face. “Noted.” There was another pause. Atsushi shifted in his seat. “I don’t know what you need it for, just don’t do anything stupid. If they catch you—”

“They’ll what? Lock me up?” Dazai gave a pointed look around the cafeteria. “We’re already in the cage, Atsushi. I just want to see what the zookeepers are hiding.” He took a bite of the oatmeal, made a face, and put the spoon down.

“Anyway,” he said, in a suddenly cheerful tone, “thanks for the tip, but you’ll be helping me, right, Atsushi-kun?”

Atsushi froze mid‑bite. “…Helping you?” Dazai propped his chin in one hand, watching him.  “Mmhm. I’ve only got one pair of eyes. You, on the other hand, seem like the kind of boy who notices things, the kind of person people wouldn’t be afraid of saying important things around, since it’s ‘just you’. They would never suspect a kind soul like yours.”

“That’s not—I can’t get involved. If anyone found out I was helping you—”

“They’d lock you up?” Dazai finished for him. “I’m not asking you to steal anything. Just… pay attention. Tell me what you see, who goes in and out of the north wing, when… Little things. You’re good at those, aren’t you?”

Atsushi’s mouth opened, closed. He looked down at his food, then back up at Dazai’s gaze, which had sharpened despite the smile still in place. “You’re serious,” he said quietly.

“Deadly.” Dazai lowered his voice a bit. “Besides… I know you’ve wondered too. About the files. About what they’re not telling us.” Atsushi didn’t answer, but that look in his eyes was enough for the brunette. He had indeed wondered.

“Thought so,” Dazai murmured, too low for anyone else to hear.

“I’m not—”

“You don’t have to be anything,” he cut in, “just… keep your eyes open. That’s all I need.” Atsushi hesitated for a long moment, then gave a reluctant nod, almost imperceptible. Dazai’s smile widened, triumphant. “Perfect,” he said softly, rising from the table and sliding his tray aside. “I knew I could count on you.”

He left Atsushi sitting there with his food, the boy’s uneasy gaze followed him all the way to the door. And as Dazai stepped back into the sterile hallway, that smile never left his face.

═════

The next morning, when Atsushi saw the way Dazai’s eyes landed on him almost immediately as he stepped in, he felt his shoulder stiff. 

“Mind if I join?” Dazai asked, already sliding into the chair across from him without waiting for an answer. His smile was softer than the day before. Atsushi blinked, hesitating. “Well, you always do.”

Dazai set his tray down with a little too much care, oatmeal sloshing in its bowl. “You make it sound like a bad habit.”

“It might be,” the boy muttered, stirring his food without looking up.

“You thought about what I asked, didn’t you?”

Atsushi’s spoon froze mid‑stir. For as much as he’d like to pretend that no, he hadn’t actually thought about it and forgot the moment Dazai left the cafeteria yesterday, he knew he couldn’t really lie there. “I shouldn’t even be talking about it…”

“But you will,” Dazai prompted softly, as he leaned his chin into his hand, watching him with a look that was almost fond.

“You know, if anyone catches on, I’m screwed too.”

“You’re assuming I’d let that happen,” 

Atsushi huffed. “…Fine. I looked around. Subtly. Like you wanted me to.” Dazai’s smile widened as he waited for him to keep going. The boy glanced over his shoulder, then leaned in. “The staff… they take shifts through the night. It’s not always the same people. But…” He hesitated, lowering his voice even more. “The record room? Past the north hallway? Its lights are always off after midnight.”

Dazai’s brows lifted slightly, but he didn’t interrupt. “I don’t know if anyone’s actually inside,” Atsushi admitted. “But no one goes in or out during the late hours—at least not that I’ve seen. And I’ve been here a while.”

The brunette tapped his spoon idly against the rim of his untouched oatmeal, considering that. “Lights off after midnight…” He hummed. Atsushi gave him a nervous look. “Dazai… you’re not actually thinking of—”

“I’m always thinking,” Dazai let the spoon rest in the bowl and sat back, folding his arms loosely over his chest.

“You’re… smiling,” the boy said quietly, almost accusing. “I was just thinking,” the other murmured. About how predictable I am. Dazai’s smile tilted as he thought that. It was funny, wasn’t it? The way he swore to himself he wouldn’t give Fyodor the satisfaction, and here he was, trying to get into the record rooms, trying to involve Atsushi in this, just because he planted the idea of his diagnosis in his head. 

A low laugh escaped Dazai—soft, without humor in it. “It is what it is,” he muttered, but Atsushi didn’t ask about what he meant, this whole situation was already a mess.

“Atsushi-kun, tonight,” The brunette started, “you’ll help me. I’ll need you to pretend you’re asleep. Don’t get up if anyone comes by. Don’t make a sound. And—” his tone turned playful, almost sing‑song, “—when the hour’s right, I’ll come to your room.”

“My… room?” Atsushi repeated, startled.

“Mmhm.” Dazai tapped the side of his tray. “You didn’t think I was going to wander the halls alone, did you? No, no, you’re coming with me. Two sets of eyes, two sets of excuses if we’re caught.”

Atsushi stared at him, unsure if this was a joke. “You don’t even know which room I’m in.”

“That’s why I’m asking.” Dazai’s smile turned sweet. “Your room number, Atsushi‑kun?” The boy hesitated, then sighed in defeat, lowering his voice again. “…Twentyseven, east wing, it’s a single room...”

“Perfect.” Dazai rose from the table, collecting his untouched tray. “Pretend to sleep. Wait for me. I’ll be very quiet.”

Atsushi didn’t even have the time to speak before he left.

The hallway felt longer than usual on the way back.

Dazai’s hands were in his pockets, shoulders relaxed in a way that didn’t match the restless pacing of his thoughts. He paused at the door to room 16, brushing his fingers over the handle before he pushed it open.

Fyodor was where he so often was, by the window, with one leg crossed over the other, his dark hair brushing the collar of his shirt. “You’re early,” 

“Breakfast was terrible,” Dazai replied, kicking the door shut behind him. He slipped out of his shoes, sitting at the edge of the bed. “Though I suppose you already knew that.” 

Fyodor’s eyes slid toward him. “I imagined you’d linger. You usually do when you’re digging into other people.”

Dazai smirked faintly. “I’m very nice to talk to, you know. Atsushi just can’t get enough of my presence.”

“Mm.” Fyodor tilted his head, considering. “Or perhaps you were looking for something.” Dazai huffed out a laugh. “I should be flattered that you pay such close attention to me.” 

The other simply smiled at him. “Do whatever you like, Osamu.” Said that, he looked away, they both knew that the other knew what was going on, what the plan was. 

Dazai watched his back for a long moment, then he lay down, folding one arm over his eyes again like he’d done the night before. “You know I will,”

═════

It was the middle of the night, probably around 2AM, the hallway was dead silent. Dazai moved barefoot in the dark hallways, he made sure to check the nurses turns before walking out of his shared room. He was half-amused by how easy it was to get this far. No alarms, no cameras, Fyodor didn’t even say a word when he saw him leaving, most likely because this was going exactly like he had wanted it to. 

He reached room 27. Atsushi’s. He paused at the door, knocking once, a code they hadn’t even discussed, but Atsushi must’ve caught on anyway. The door creaked open from the inside a second later. The younger man blinked at him, his silver hair tousled, but he clearly hadn’t slept yet. “You’re late,” he whispered.

“You sound just like Fyodor,” Dazai muttered, stepping in. Atsushi shut the door behind him. “That’s not funny.”

Dazai gave a silent shrug and turned, motioning with his hand. “Ready?”

“Are you sure about this? If we get caught—”

Dazai held up a hand, cutting him off. “Shh. They'll do what? Write another note in our files?” His tone softened. “You don’t know why I’m doing this, but I need to see something there.” Atsushi nodded reluctantly, glancing toward the door as though expecting someone to burst in. 

They moved through the dark with only the faint green glow of emergency exit signs guiding them. Dazai had timed it carefully—the nurses changed rotation at 2:30, and it bought them at least twenty minutes where the east corridor would be deserted. 

The records room was on the lower floor. No windows, no security cameras in the hallway, just a reinforced wooden door with a basic lock and a “STAFF ONLY” sign so worn it looked like it belonged to a janitor’s closet.

Atsushi stayed just behind as Dazai crouched in front of the door. “You sure you know what you’re doing?” he whispered.

Dazai didn’t look back. “That’s the fun part, isn’t it?” He pulled a flattened paperclip from his hoodie sleeve, twisted it with practiced ease, and got to work on the lock. He looked like he’d done something like this before, and judging by the subject he was, he probably had.

“...Where did you get the paperclip from? We’re not allowed—”

He was interrupted by the door clicking open after only a few seconds. He stared. “That… should be more concerning than it is.”

“Add it to the list, then.” Dazai pushed the door open and stepped into the dark. The room smelled of paper and antiseptic, the air was heavier than the rest of the building. Rows of file cabinets loomed in the low light, gray and uniform. Atsushi followed, carefully easing the door shut behind them. 

The brunette stood in the center of the room, turning slowly. His voice was low, more to himself than to Atsushi. “They kept it exactly how I pictured, obsessively neat. Like if the files are orderly, then the people are, too.”

He moved toward one of the cabinets marked "INTERNAL FILES – PSYCH EVALS." 

“What are you looking for first?” Atsushi asked from behind him. Dazai didn’t answer right away. His fingers brushed the drawer handle, curling over it slowly. “…Fyodor Dostoevsky.”

The drawer slid open with a heavy metallic sound that made the younger flinch in fear, he was praying whatever God was actually there that no one heard that. 

Dazai scanned the labels in silence, even though reading in this darkness was harder than he initially thought. When he found it, his fingers hesitated. They hovered. If he opened this, there’d be no doubt anymore, he was going to know how long Fyodor had been there, why, and what his professional diagnosis was.

And maybe that was exactly what Fyodor wanted. He pulled the file free anyway.

The folder was slim. Of course it was, Fyodor wouldn’t let them pin him down with words too easily. 

Dazai flipped it open, the paper crackled faintly as he angled it toward the thin shaft of hallway light spilling in from beneath the door. His eyes adjusted, scanning the neat black print and clipped handwriting scrawled in the margins. 

Name: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Date of Birth: 11 November
Age: 22
Patient ID: 16–441–D

Beneath that, his eyes caught the next line, written in the stark, impersonal tone of the institutional records:

Admission History: Fourth recorded stay within the Yokohama Psychiatric Center. Patient has been admitted and discharged on three prior occasions over the span of 4 years.

Dazai’s lips curved faintly, without any real amusement in it. Four times…

Course of Treatment: Patient repeatedly refuses to participate in recommended therapies and interventions. Refusal documented in previous stays, persistent non‑compliance noted. Patient remains cognitively intact, high-functioning, but exhibits no recorded progress in emotional integration or pro-social behavioral development.

A scribbled note in Dr. Ootake’s handwriting caught his eye: “Insight into condition: high. Manipulative tendencies: high. Engages in treatment only when advantageous. He poses no physical threat to others, but his psychological influence is significant.”

Dazai’s jaw tightened as he read on.

Primary Diagnosis: Antisocial Personality Disorder (ICD-10: F60.2) 

Subtype: Psychopathic traits prominent.

Diagnosis rendered and confirmed by Dr. Ootake after extensive evaluation in second admission. No evidence contradicting initial assessment in subsequent stays. 

Special Note: Subject is not currently under active psychiatric care due to refusal to participate. Dr. Ootake’s final recommendation advised against further attempts at traditional treatment. Suggested course of action: observation only. 

Dazai stared at the last line for a long time. Observation only. He let the file lower a little in his hand, Atsushi hovered behind him, silent now.

Four stays. Four years. No current doctor. 

There was something about it—not because it was unexpected, but because it wasn’t. This was exactly the shape of Fyodor Dostoevsky that Dazai had already suspected. And it still left a taste in his mouth like iron. 

He flipped the page, scanning for more, for anything that didn’t sound so clinical. There were no therapy transcripts, no medications listed, no behavioral improvements. Nothing that looked like progress. Just a file that had been added to and reopened again and again, as if the ward itself kept trying to understand him and failing. 

He closed the file slowly.

“Did you find what you needed?” Atsushi whispered, nervously glancing toward the door.

Dazai’s fingers tightened slightly around the folder before sliding it back into place. “Not sure,” he said, then he turned to Atsushi. “Let’s check mine.”

The boy blinked. “Your file?”

Dazai’s smile returned. “You didn’t think I came all the way down here just for his, did you?”

He moved to the next cabinet, labeled “PATIENT RECORDS – ACTIVE.” His fingers trembled now as he opened the drawer. Because no matter how much he joked, he wasn't sure he wanted to read what they'd written about him.

Dazai’s fingers brushed over the labels until he found his own name.

For a heartbeat he simply stared at it, thumb resting on the edge of the folder. Then he pulled it free.

Name: Osamu Dazai 

Date of Birth: 19 June

Age: 20
Patient ID: 27–083–D

Admission Date: 1 month prior.

Most recent evaluation: 3 days prior.

Treatment Course: Patient appears calm and engaged on surface level, but demonstrates habitual patterns of avoidance and subtle non-cooperation. Attends group therapy sporadically, and while outwardly participatory, shows no genuine investment in therapeutic outcomes. Uses humor and misdirection to deflect from personal introspection.

Dazai's lips twitched faintly. Guilty.

Suicidal History: Long-standing ideation. Three documented attempts in the month prior to admission. Self-harming behavior noted in previous hospital documents, particularly following the most recent attempts (see Emergency Report 11–A/February). Physical scarring consistent with past ideation; current behavior monitored under moderate risk protocol.

Dazai exhaled slowly, his thumb pressing into the paper as he kept reading.

Relational History: Patient consistently declines to provide details regarding personal relationships. Reports limited or no contact with outside supports. Displays avoidant attachment tendencies, possible unresolved trauma regarding interpersonal bonds.

His lips curved faintly, humorless. Avoidant, huh? That was one word for it.

Behavioral Notes: High cognitive functioning observed. Exhibits impulsivity in decision-making and risk assessment. Tends to intellectualize or joke in response to emotional prompts, appears avoidant of own affective states, redirects or suppresses emotional disclosure. 

The last section stopped him. His eyes lingered on the neat handwriting, the single line in Dr. Ootake’s firm script: 

Preliminary Diagnostic Impression: Traits consistent with Antisocial Personality Spectrum Disorder – sociopathic presentation suspected. “Patient demonstrates calculated charm and adaptive functioning, but recurrent self-destructive behavior and impulsive disregard for personal well-being are pronounced. Further observation required.”

Dazai let out a soft, dry laugh under his breath, the sound was audible. He tilted his head back for a second, eyes shut, file still in hand.

Of course. Of course it would say that.

He traced the edge of the page with one fingertip, then closed the folder carefully, sliding it back into place as if it burned to hold it any longer. He straightened, eyes sweeping over the other labels, almost idly, until one caught his eye.

Atsushi Nakajima.

His brows arched faintly and without thinking, he tugged the file free and glanced over his shoulder. “Curious?” he asked softly, holding it up between two fingers. Atsushi, who had been hovering by the door with nerves strung tight, blinked. “That’s… mine, isn’t it?”

“Mm. Unless there’s another Atsushi with bad luck in this place,” Dazai said lightly, stepping closer and pressing the folder into his hands. “Go on. Fair’s fair.”

He hesitated, then sat on the edge of a low shelf, the file trembled faintly in his grip as he opened it. His eyes scanned the page quickly:

Name: Atsushi Nakajima

Date of Birth: 5 May

Age: 16

Patient ID: 27–109–A

Admission Date: 6 months prior.

Current Status: Ongoing observation and therapy participation.

Atsushi’s throat bobbed as he read further.

Diagnosis: C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). “Symptoms include hypervigilance, intrusive recollections, difficulty regulating affect, and pervasive sense of guilt and self-blame. Patient demonstrates sensitivity to perceived criticism and difficulty establishing a stable sense of safety.”

He swallowed, his shoulders curled inward slightly. Dazai didn’t interrupt him, he only tipped his head, studying the way Atsushi’s fingers gripped the edges of the folder. 

Progress Notes: Patient displays cooperation with treatment though progress is gradual. Nightmares and heightened startle response continue. Has formed limited to no peer bonds within the facility. “Further stabilization and trauma-focused therapy recommended.”

Atsushi’s lips parted as if to speak, but nothing came out. He closed the folder quietly, eyes downcast. For a second, he just sat there, letting out a shaky breath.

Dazai’s tone was softer when he finally spoke. “You didn’t have to read it all if you didn’t want to, y’know.”

“I… I needed to,” The boy murmured, still looking at the file in his hands. His knuckles were white on the edges. Dazai crouched slightly, with one hand resting on a cabinet handle for balance. “Well,” he said with a low hum, “now we both know what they’ve been writing about us at the other side of the desk.”

Atsushi let out a weak laugh, “doesn’t feel great.”

“No,” Dazai agreed, straightening and glancing toward the door, his smile was thin. He took the file back gently, slid it into place next to the others, and dusted his hands off. “Come on,” he whispered, voice returning to that light teasing lilt, “before someone wakes up and decides to write trespassing accomplice under your progress notes.”

The younger huffed softly, but he followed him out, pulling the door shut with care. Dazai moved first, shoulders relaxed, hands in his hoodie pocket like they were just out for a midnight stroll instead of committing the kind of rule-breaking that would get them both flagged on half a dozen reports. 

Atsushi trailed close behind, the soft shuffle of his socks betraying his nerves. Every distant rattle of the building made him flinch, eyes darting toward dark doorframes as though a nurse might appear from the shadows at any second.

“Relax,” The brunette murmured over his shoulder, amused. “You look more suspicious than I do, and I’m the one who just raided the zoo archives.”

“Easy for you to say,” Atsushi hissed softly. “You don’t have a clean record to ruin.” Dazai’s laugh was low, quiet, and fleeting. “Oh, Atsushi-kun… none of us have clean records here.”

They slipped around a corner, ducked past the nurses’ station—the chair was empty, just as Dazai had calculated. Timing was everything.

They were back at Atsushi’s door in less than 5 minutes. The boy eased it open, glancing back at Dazai. “You’re… heading back alone?” 

“Of course. I’d hate to keep Fyodor waiting too long, he might start missing me too much.” A crooked smile played on his lips. Atsushi frowned, lowering his voice. “Be careful, Dazai. About all of this.”

For a moment, Dazai only stared at him, his smile faltered. Then he waved a lazy hand. “Get some sleep, Atsushi-kun. You’ve earned it.”

Before Atsushi could reply, he was already moving, his footsteps silent as he melted back into the corridor. 

The walk back to room 16 felt longer. He slid the door open carefully, the familiar glow of the bedside lamp greeting him like any other day. Fyodor was obviously still awake, sitting on his bed, with the Bible closed next to him. “Out for a stroll?”

Dazai leaned against the doorframe, letting it close behind him with a soft click. “Why? Want to come next time? Thought you were busy with your Bible things”

Fyodor’s gaze lowered, almost lazily, to the edge of Dazai’s sleeve where the paperclip had been tucked hours earlier, then back up to his face. There was no accusation in his tone when he spoke again, only amusement. “I wouldn’t have come anyways, Room Sixteen is my place.” His fingers brushed the cover of the Bible beside him, idly tracing the worn edges. “Do you know what sixteen signifies?”

Dazai arched a brow, pretending nonchalance as he crossed the room. “Enlighten me, Father.”

Fyodor’s lips curved faintly. “In scripture, numbers are seldom meaningless. Sixteen represents love and loving. It is tied to completeness through trial. Sixteen ways love is described in the Corinthians, sixteen kings over Judah before the exile… the pattern repeats. It often also signifies love and devotion within human relationships, the kind of bond between a husband and wife.” 

“Oh?” Dazai stepped further in. “Are you saying this is some kind of… marital suite, Fyodor? That you see us as husband and wife?”

“You’re the one drawing conclusions.”

Dazai chuckled under his breath and let himself sink down onto his bed, flopping onto his side to watch him. “Mm, but you’re not exactly denying it, are you? Room Sixteen… love and devotion… my, my, Dostoevsky. You’re going to make me blush.”

Fyodor tilted his head, unbothered. “Interpret it however you wish.”

“Alright then,” The brunette went on, “but if we’re playing by the Bible, you know it says no sex before marriage.” He gestured lazily at the space between them. “And as far as I know, you’re not married. You’re sinning, Fyodor.”

There was a moment of silence, Fyodor’s gaze held his own steadily, then, with that same maddening calm, he replied, “Is that so.” He didn’t deny it. He didn’t rise to the bait. He simply shifted, folding his hands in his lap.

To him, there was no contradiction, no broken rule.

Because in his mind, that vow had already been made the first day Dazai walked through the door of this room.

From that moment on, Dazai had already been his. Bound not by rings or law, but by whatever thread had drawn them into each other’s orbit—and Fyodor had accepted it without question.

“You’re such a romantic, you know that?” The other teased, looking up at the ceiling. Fyodor only reached for the lamp, his voice was quiet as he clicked the light off. “Sleep, Osamu.”

Chapter Text

Two days later, the room was the same as always, the same as every Tuesday and Friday. Dr. Ootake didn’t bother looking up right away when Dazai stepped in. The clipboard in his hand received a final note, then he gestured lazily toward the usual seat without lifting his gaze.

Dazai dropped into the chair like he owned it, like he owned the place. “You’re late,” Ootake said.

“You’re boring,” he replied, voice light as he let out a sigh.

That earned the faintest raise of an eyebrow. It was nothing new from Dazai, and anyone who hadn't a degree in psychiatry wouldn't have noticed the slight shift in him. “Well, you came either way.”

“Wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings, doctor.”

Ootake finally looked at him, eyes steady. There was no reason to pretend with someone like the man sitting in front of him. “Something about you is different today.”

Dazai grinned. “Haircut.”

“Your posture.” 

Dazai said nothing. His eyes slid toward the small clock ticking. Three minutes in. Fifty-seven to go. He didn’t plan on saying much this time.

Ootake leaned back, fingers steepled against his chest. “So, how is your state of mind since the last time we spoke?”

“Pristine. Enlightened. Transcendent, even.” He smiled, saccharine. “You really do miracles, doctor.”

“You’ve stopped deflecting with humor as much, but your sarcasm is sharper. That usually happens after emotional breakthroughs. Or intimacy. It's on you whether you tell me which one it is.”

Dazai scoffed, resting his elbow on the arm of the chair and his chin against his knuckles. “You sure love projecting things onto me. Makes your job easier, huh?? Sounds more like there's some gossip you wanna know.”

“It was simply a psychological observation,” Ootake corrected. “But it wouldn’t be hard to turn it into gossip, depending on who I tell.”

The brunette laughed. “I didn’t know snitching was part of your job description.”

“It’s not. I’m giving you the opportunity to keep me out of it.”

That made Dazai pause before speaking. There was no way he would admit what he did in the past days. “Sounds like you think something happened.”

“I don’t need to think it, I see it. Your affect’s changed. Your attention, too. I don’t know what happened between you and Fyodor this time—”

Dazai’s grin returned in full, as theatrical as ever. “Oh, come on, that pale rat? I’m done playing with—”

“—and I don’t want to know,” Ootake finished dryly. “Unless you tell me.”

Silence stretched between them and Dazai’s smile faltered. He’d slipped. The doctor let the air settle before continuing, quieter. “Let’s be clear, Dazai. If I had a concrete reason to believe you broke protocol I’d be required to report it. But I don’t, yet.”

Dazai didn’t respond. His hands laced together, he could feel his jaw tighten beneath the smile he was still wearing.

“I’m not your enemy,” Ootake added. “But I also won’t play dumb if you keep poking the rules.”

“So you won’t play dumb… but you will play blind?”

“If that’s what keeps this conversation productive.”

A soft, humorless chuckle escaped Dazai. “Ah, so that’s your price, silence for insight? How noble. Do you give that speech to all the patients you’re trying to get secrets out of?”

“No, most of them don’t try so hard to prove nothing happened.”

Dazai’s smile thinned, but he didn't say anything more. He shifted in his seat, legs uncrossing, then crossing the other way.

“Alright, doctor,” he said finally, stretching the title like a yawn. “You're not my enemy, but you're also not exactly my friend.”

“I don't get paid to be,” Ootake replied. “You're not here to like me, we’re not going to hang out together. You're here to recover.”

“Recovery,” Dazai echoed. “I keep forgetting that’s the goal. Sometimes it feels like I’m just supposed to stay in here long enough for you people to call me stable.”

Ootake tilted his head slightly. “Is that not what you want?”

“To be called stable? Sure. Call me anything. 'Functional' has a nice ring to it too. 'Fixed” sounds cute.” 

“I don’t care what label they use,” Ootake said. “Only whether you believe it.”

Dazai stared at him for a long moment, not smiling for once.“You really think people like me get fixed?”

“I think people like you have to define what ‘fixed’ means for themselves,” the doctor remained calm. “Or they get stuck trying to live up to definitions that were never meant for them in the first place.”

That earned an exaggeratedly annoyed sigh from the brunette, who leaned back in the chair tiredly, crossing his arms. “you speak like a man who's seen too many cases go nowhere.”

“Or somewhere unexpected.”

“Same thing, in here.”

Ootake didn’t argue with that. He simply made a small note on his clipboard, and Dazai obviously noticed. “What’s that one say? Patient deflects with? What complex word is it this time, doctor?”

“No complex words in this note, Dazai.”

“Ah, such a shame.”

The psychiatrist wrote something more, not looking up at his patient for a few long seconds. “Do you trust him?” He asked, eventually.

Dazai inhaled through his nose. “You said you didn’t want to know.”

“I don’t, but I want you to know, whether you trust him, whether you should.” He paused, finally looking up. “And whether you care if it costs you.”

That one hit deeper than Dazai liked. He rolled his shoulders, like the thought had settled into his skin, leaving an uncomfortable feeling. He didn’t answer. His eyes had drifted toward the corner of the room, unfocused.

Eventually, the doctor’s voice broke the silence. “Any changes in your sleep?” The shift in topic was jarring. Dazai blinked, almost startled by how ordinary the question was. He exhaled through his nose, lips curling faintly in irritation. “Oh, we’re back to the checklist now?”

“I’m trying to assess your recovery. That includes your sleep schedule.”

“well then, sleeping like a baby,” Dazai replied smoothly. “Every night. You could ask the nurses.” Ootake smiled faintly at that answer. “Since we increased the dose, has it helped?”  

“Oh, yeah. No dreams, no thoughts, nothing. Like being dead, but cozier.” The doctor nodded, writing something down. Dazai watched his pen with mild interest, wondering if his lie had just been made official. He kept his expression placid. If Ootake suspected anything, he didn’t say it. “That’s all for today.”

The brunette blinked. “No final words of wisdom? I was expecting a monologue about inner growth or trust or whatever.”

“Not today.” Ootake’s voice was calm. “Some days, reflection needs space. Not more words.” 

Dazai stood slowly, stretching his arms overhead with a bored sigh. “Deep. You should write a book.” 

“I’d rather you write your own story first.”

He gave the doctor a lazy salute, already halfway to the door. “Chapter one: Eat lunch before you lose your mind.” Then he slipped out, the door clicked shut behind him.

By the time Dazai reached the cafeteria, the noise had risen. It always felt a little strange, hearing that low hum of patients laughing too hard or not at all, staff pretending to be neutral, the occasional clang of metal trays and the sharp hiss of soda machines that hadn't worked properly in years. It was an absolute mess.

He didn’t even glance around before making his way to the table in the corner, the one Atsushi always sat at. the boy was already there, picking at what looked like soup, he didn’t even look hungry. His eyes flicked up quickly when the brunette dropped into the seat across from him.

For a moment neither of them said anything. Dazai didn’t need to ask him what was going on, he could see it in the way his fingers trembled slightly when they brushed against the spoon, how his gaze dipped back down the moment it met his. Atsushi was scared, tense, like he was waiting. Waiting to be caught. Waiting to pay the price for breaking protocol last night. 

Dazai offered him nothing more than a lazy smile. “Morning.” Atsushi didn’t look up. “It’s afternoon, technically.” 

“Ah, but you see, I didn’t greet you this morning, so I’m retroactively fixing my manners.” Dazai tilted his head. “I’m trying to be a better person. Aren’t we all?” 

The younger boy let out a breath that might’ve been a laugh, or maybe just air trying to escape nerves. His voice was quieter when he spoke again. “You’re not worried?” 

“About what?” The brunette asked anyway, already knowing what he was referring to. Atsushi gave him a look. “You know what.”

“If there was something to worry about, don’t you think we would’ve been called in by now?” Dazai replied.

“But the cameras—”

“No cameras in your room,” he cut in. “No one saw anything. Unless you confessed it to someone, which I sincerely hope you didn’t.” Atsushi shook his head quickly. “No. Of course not. I’m not—I wouldn’t…”

“Then you’re fine.” That should’ve been reassuring. It was meant to be. But the boy still looked like someone had tied a string around his ribs and kept pulling tighter. He stirred the soup absently, not eating it. 

Dazai didn’t push, it wasn’t worth it. Instead he leaned forward on his elbows, resting his chin in one hand. “You’ll make yourself sick if you keep stressing like that.”

“I just—I don’t want to be in trouble,” Atsushi admitted, his voice was barely audible beneath the cafeteria’s ambient chatter and from the way he was whispering. “I can’t—not again.” There was something about how he said it that made him sound ten times more terrified than a few seconds before. A voice like that shouldn't belong to someone his age. Sixteen going on a lifetime of bad luck.

Dazai exhaled through his nose. “No one’s putting you in isolation, Atsushi. Not for this, trust me.” It didn’t seem to calm the boy entirely, but he gave a small nod and returned to quietly picking at his food. It was something.

When lunch was over, they stood together but peeled off in opposite directions down the hall, Atsushi toward his own room, Dazai toward the familiar door of room 16.

The door clicked softly shut behind him, his eyes immediately locked on Fyodor, the man was at the desk again, posture perfect, and his fingers were toying with the rim of the empty porcelain teacup as if he had been waiting all along. “You came back late,” he murmured without turning.

Dazai lazily tossed himself onto the mattress. “Cafeteria was crowded and Atsushi thinks the soup is conspiring against him.” He lied. Fyodor’s lips curved slightly as he glanced over. “You’re kind. Sitting with him.”

“Kind? That’s a new one. Thought you’d say manipulative. Or bored.” The brunette snorted, dragging a hand over his eyes. “Bored men don’t soothe trembling hands,” the other said softly, his voice was gentle in a way that sounded almost unsettling coming from him. It left Dazai confused but before he could speak, a brisk knock rattled the door. It opened without waiting for an answer.

A nurse stepped in, looking kind of nervous, she had many papers in her hand. She didn’t look at Fyodor longer than necessary, most would say she was trying to ignore his presence, and that was definitely the case. She crossed toward Dazai’s bed, handing him a sheet of paper. “April’s program schedule,” she said neutrally, placing it on the small table between the beds before the man could grab it. “Breakfast adjustments are noted in the margins. Don’t lose this!” No smile, no small talk. She turned and left as quickly as she had come.

Dazai rolled onto his side, staring at the page without touching it. “A whole new month of enlightenment. How exciting.” Fyodor watched him without saying a word, then his eyes flicked to the paper as well.

YOKOHAMA PSYCHIATRIC CENTER — MONTHLY PATIENT PROGRAM

April Program – Ward C: Group A

GROUP THERAPIES (Compulsory attendance: 1/week) (Room 5D)

 • Monday, 9:00 – 10:00 AM — Emotional Processing

 • Wednesday, 3:00 – 4:00 PM — Trauma-Centered Cognitive Discussion

 • Friday, 10:30 – 11:30 AM — Social Reintegration Roleplay

INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS (Assigned by caseworker)

 • Scheduled directly with your attending psychiatrist.

 • Duration: 45 minutes. Check room assignments on board.

ACTIVITY BLOCKS (Choose at least 1/week)

 • Tuesday, 2:00 – 3:30 PM — Music Appreciation (Room 3C)

 • Thursday, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM — Collage & Found Art (Room 7B)

 • Saturday, 1:00 – 2:30 PM — Horticulture & Soil Work (Courtyard East)

EVENING OPTIONALS (Free attendance)

 • Monday & Thursday, 6:00 – 7:00 PM — Film Screening (Rec Room)

 • Sunday, 3:00 – 4:00 PM — Guided Meditation & Breathing

 • Friday, 7:30 PM — Storytelling (Rec Room)

“Participation in programming is essential to your progress. We thank you for your cooperation.”

Dazai plucked the paper from the bedside table with two fingers, waving it lightly in Fyodor’s direction. “Look, we got music appreciation in an hour.”

“You won’t go,” Fyodor said simply. The brunette grinned lazily, his gaze switched between the lines without really reading. “Maybe. Or maybe I’ll take up gardening and bury myself alive in the soil, very poetic, you might want to be there while I do it.” When he finally lowered the page, he found those violet eyes already waiting for him, soft this time, impossibly soft, like Fyodor had been listening for something that wasn’t written on paper at all. 

Dazai put the paper back on the small table. “Charming. They really think these activities will save us.” Fyodor’s voice came low, with that same gentle tone from earlier. “If you went to music appreciation, I imagine you’d sit in the back row, pretending to sleep. Then you’d hum something under your breath when you thought no one could hear.” 

Dazai’s brows flicked up, amused. “You’ve got it all figured out, hm? What would you do, then? Applaud?”

“I’d watch you.” The Russian’s tone was smooth, kind, even tender, like he was offering a compliment. “Because everything you do is more interesting than the rest of them… Even your silence. Especially your silence.”

For a moment, it sounded sweet. Too sweet. A warmth that felt scary instead of comforting.

Dazai tilted his head on the pillow, looking away. “Careful Fyodor, you’ll make me blush.” But Fyodor only smiled softly, leaning forward in his chair, elbows resting lightly on his knees. “I don’t mind if you do. Red suits you.”

It was uncanny, the way he said it. Like a lover’s murmur with no intimacy behind it. His voice was soft, but his eyes never changed. 

Dazai let out a short laugh, dry in his throat. “You talk like you’re trying to tame me.” Fyodor’s head tilted. “No, I’d never want to dull you, Dazai. You’re brightest when you resist.” His voice was kind, but there was a twist beneath it. “I only want to keep you exactly as you are.”

The sweetness clung like sugar on a wound.

Dazai rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling crack. “Now you talk like we’re old friends or something, I’ve only been here a month, you’re getting too attached.”

“Not friends,” the other corrected him. “Something rarer. Something that doesn’t fit a word you’d find in their records room.”

The silence that followed wasn’t hostile, it wasn’t even heavy. It was worse. Calm, like a lullaby sung off-key, the sweetness just wrong enough to make Dazai’s skin prickle. 

“You’re so obsessed, you almost sound like a poet of the Dolce Stil Novo, will you start writing about me next?” Dazai looked back at him with a smirk.

“Oh, Dazai dear, I don’t need poetry.” Fyodor rose from the chair slowly. He crossed the short space between them until he was standing at the edge of Dazai’s bed. “You give me all the words I need.” The brunette tilted his head back against the mattress, still sprawled but less relaxed. His grin sharpened, defense disguised as charm. “You really are terrible at flirting,” he muttered. 

Fyodor leaned down, his form covered the window’s light. His pale fingers braced lightly on the mattress by Dazai’s shoulder, close to him but not touching. His face was closer to his now. “I told you before,” he murmured with that same tenderness, so low Dazai almost missed it, “I don’t flirt.”

And before Dazai could smirk again, before he could slip into another deflection, Fyodor closed the distance, being the one initiating the kiss this time. It only lasted a second, he didn’t wait for Dazai to kiss back before pulling away slightly, enough to look at the other’s face.

For a heartbeat, the brunette didn’t move. His breath stalled, his grin was gone as he stared into the purple eyes above him. It took him a few seconds to process that Fyodor was the one who initiated it this time, and he wasn’t going to back down. His hand shot up and his fingers curled into Fyodor’s collar as he tugged him down, hard enough to erase all the gentleness the other approached him with. 

Their mouths met again, and Fyodor didn’t resist. He leaned into it, the way his hand braced against the mattress shifted closer, pressing the edge of his weight into Dazai’s ribs. The russian’s lips curved faintly against his, a smile, as if he’d been expecting this all along. The kiss deepened again, their teeth brushing faintly but neither did mind, until Dazai let out a low sound that sounded like a laugh. “You really don’t waste time, do you?”

Fyodor’s gaze lingered on his mouth. “Time is the one thing they can’t medicate out of us.” The answer earned him another kiss, Dazai dragged him down closer this time. His fingers moved impatiently, tugging at the buttons of Fyodor’s shirt, while a pale hand slid beneath the hem of his sweater.

The room shrank to the space between their mouths, their bodies pressed too close on a mattress too thin, clearly not built for this type of movements. It escalated quickly, their clothes were thrown on the floor near Dazai’s bed and forgotten as they only focused on each other.

In less than an hour, the sheets were a mess, too thin to cover them up completely, but that wasn’t an issue as that was the second time this happened. Fyodor hadn’t returned to his own bed, he was stretched on Dazai’s side instead, with one hand resting on the other’s ribs. 

“Afternoon delight,” Dazai muttered, sounding rather amused. “If the nurses knew, they’d put us in separate rooms.”

Fyodor’s lips curved faintly. “They’d kick you out, I’ve seen it happen multiple times to other people. I don’t think that would work for you, though, they might think you’re the same as me.”

“You’re terrible at pillow talk, you know that?” Dazai huffed a dry laugh, staring at the ceiling crack. “You prefer lies?” Fyodor asked, smiling at him.

But before the brunette could answer, somewhere down the hall, loud enough to echo through the walls, a voice rang out, high, startled, breathless. “Oh god, he’s back!” The words were followed by the slap of shoes against the floor, indicating that someone was running. Then a nurse’s voice could be heard, shouting to try and keep patients calm.

Dazai’s head turned toward the door, his eyes were wide as he didn’t expect someone to scream like that, it doesn’t usually happen in the afternoon. “…Back?” His voice was low, more to himself than anyone else. He propped himself onto his elbows.

Fyodor hadn’t moved at all, his violet eyes were fixed on the brunette’s face as though nothing had happened. No tension in his shoulders, no surprise. 

Dazai turned toward him. “You heard that too, right? I didn’t imagine it.” 

“Of course I heard,” he murmured. “Why do you look so surprised?” 

The other let out a scoff. “Someone screams, sounding terrified, in the hall and you look like you’ve been expecting a pizza delivery. Who the hell’s back?” Fyodor didn’t answer. His gaze was steady, maddeningly calm. “Does it matter?”

“That depends,” Dazai muttered, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. His bare feet pressed to the cold floor. The running steps outside had faded now, but the feeble hum of patients’ voices carried still, unsettled. “Usually when someone yells in a place like this, it matters a lot.”

Fyodor watched as Dazai stood, reaching for his discarded clothes in a careless rush. He pulled his hoodie back on, dragged his pants up and walked toward the door, his hand hovered at the knob, and without hesitating too much, he opened it enough to peek outside the room.

Patients had gathered in twos and threes, whispering something to each other, glancing somewhere behind themselves in the hallway. Some peered nervously down the corridor, others clutched their sleeves or paced, restless. But for all the noise, for all the nervous eyes searching, Dazai saw no one worth the fuss. He yawned faintly, fingers drumming against the doorframe. “Big show, no actor,” he muttered under his breath.

It was a few minutes before he felt a presence at his side. Fyodor had dressed up and joined him silently. He said nothing, he simply stood at his shoulder as though he’d been there all along. His stillness drew the eye more than any noise would have.

Dazai tilted his head toward him, smirking without looking away from the hall. “Not gonna give me spoilers, Fyodor? You seem to know what’s going on.”

No answer except a smile. From the cluster of patients came a sudden burst of whispering, a loud enough for Dazai to catch.

“Heard a nurse said they dragged him back…”

“Trying to murder someone this time…”

“…We shouldn’t even be here, I’ll go back to my room.”

The group of patients kept whispering with fear, but Dazai only arched an eyebrow. “Murder, huh. Very original. They should hand out bingo cards in here.” His voice was light, unimpressed. 

And then the noise of footsteps swelled, a dragging rhythm of several pairs in unison. The patients stepped back, pressing against walls, some turning their faces away as if not seeing would make them safer, as if it’d spare them. 

Dazai’s grin grew wider when he finally saw the spectacle. Two orderlies and a nurse carried the weight of a man bound tight in a pure white straitjacket, arms locked, his movements were jerky against the restraint. Long white hair spilled over his shoulders, braided neatly despite the struggle. His mouth stretched wide with a laugh that didn’t belong in the silence of a hospital, especially not a hospital like this one.

And when they reached the space in front of room 16, the man’s head jerked toward them, bright eyes catching on Fyodor. “Fedya!” His voice rang out, gleeful, unbothered by the straps biting into his shoulders. “Fedya, hi! Look, it’s me, I’m back!” The nurses tried to shush him, guiding him forward, but his voice lilted in the air, he twisted in their hold, laughing like a child tugging at a parent’s sleeve.

Dazai froze in the doorway, expression changing in multiple ways in just a few seconds. First flat, then faintly intrigued, then caught somewhere between disbelief and irritation. His eyes slid sideways to Fyodor, searching his face.

The other was unchanged, watching the white braid sway down the hall and disappear around the corner. His laughter, still high and unbothered, trailed after him until the corridor swallowed it whole. Slowly, the murmuring patients began to drift back toward their rooms, though the uneasiness was still in the air.

Dazai stayed in the doorway with his head tilted and a lazy smile creeping back onto his lips. “So,” he drawled, “you want to explain why some maniac in a straitjacket just called out your name like that? Or should I assume you’re secretly the ward’s social butterfly and you kept that hidden all along?”  

Fyodor’s profile remained calm, he walked back to his own bed. “He likes to talk.” He replied, sitting down and looking towards the brunette. “Yeah, that much I gathered,” Dazai muttered. He glanced down the hall again before shutting the door, keeping his weight slouched against it. “Was he your old roommate or something?”

“No,” he said, simply, like he was correcting a trivial detail. “Not a roommate.” 

Dazai’s brow arched, waiting. “But someone. He shouted your name like you’re some kind of long-lost lover…” He trailed off. “So what’s the deal? Bible study partner? Secret admirer?” He arched a brow, casual as ever, but the way his fingers tapped on the door betrayed him.

“None of those.” Fyodor tilted his head slightly, thoughtful. “He was simply… here, before. We’ve crossed paths.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

The brunette studied him for a long moment, waiting for a crack,a twitch, anything, but Fyodor only returned his stare with that same unyielding calm. As if Nikolai’s too cheerful shouts hadn’t touched him in the slightest. 

Finally, Dazai pushed off the door with a shrug, slipping back into the room. “Huh. Could’ve fooled me,” he muttered, his tone was light, though his chest felt uncomfortably tight. It physically hurt.

Fyodor smiled at him. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” he said, almost kindly. The other flopped onto his mattress with an exaggerated sigh, throwing an arm across his face. “Jealous? Please. I’m just trying to figure out how many lunatics around here are on your payroll.” 

The other’s smile widened a little bit, and he opened the Bible once more. “Enough,” he murmured, turning a page without looking up. Dazai looked away as well, staring up at the familiar crack on the ceiling. 

“So,” he said after a while, "You collect admirers, Fedya?” He purposely used the same nickname Nikolai gave him, dragging the word out. “Yet you seem unfazed, didn’t think you were this modest.” 

“What reaction were you hoping for?” 

Dazai wasn’t even sure of that himself, he was just trying to mess with him, he didn’t think he'd rise to the bait. “I don’t know… Shock? Denial? Maybe a blush if I’m lucky.” Dazai turned his head, studying him sideways. “But no. You’re calm as a pond. You expected him to show up.” Fyodor didn’t look up from the Bible resting open in his lap “Expectation isn’t that necessary, Nikolai always finds his way back, eventually.”  

That made the brunette smirk. “What is he, a stray dog?” Fyodor’s lips curved again, though he didn’t answer right away. He delicately flipped another page. “Perhaps. But strays can be loyal in their own peculiar ways.” 

Dazai let out a dry laugh, rolling onto his side to face him more fully. “So what you’re saying is… I should expect to hear him yelling your name down the hall every other week? Wonderful. That’ll do wonders for my sleep schedule, I should tell Ootake.” Fyodor’s gaze lifted at last, meeting his. “You sound bothered.” 

“I’m mocking,” Dazai corrected, grin thin. “It’s a talent of mine, don’t confuse it with jealousy.”

“Of course not,” Fyodor replied smoothly. He set the Bible down on the desk with a soft tap, folding his hands in his lap. “Though jealousy would mean you care where my attention goes.” 

Dazai’s smirk held, but the beat of his pulse betrayed him, quick under his skin. For the first time, he realized that he did indeed care where Fyodor's attention was directed at, and he didn't like that. He flopped back again, arm over his eyes. “You’re exhausting, you know that? Always making things sound deeper than they are. He’s just some lunatic with a braid.”

“Yes. Just a lunatic.” Fyodor's tone was quiet, tender, yet the softness sat wrong. He stared at the brunette’s form, looking satisfied. Maybe he liked making him jealous, he felt tempted to do it more often. 

═════

By dinner, the ward had fallen into its usual rhythm again, though most patients were still discussing the events from that afternoon. Dazai didn’t bother scanning the room; he made straight for the back corner where Atsushi sat hunched over his tray. The boy was picking at limp vegetables with his fork, eyes distant, shoulders tight.

“Evening,” Dazai said as he dropped into the seat across from him, setting his tray down onto the table. Atsushi glanced up quickly, then down again. “You always sit here now,” he muttered, not unkindly, but as though he hadn’t expected company. “I like it here,” the other replied breezily, leaning back in his chair. “Best seat in the whole ward.”

For a while, they ate in relative silence, Then, between one exaggerated sip and the next, Dazai let the question fall casually. “So. What’s the deal with the new guy?” Atsushi blinked, pausing. “The one from earlier? …Nikolai?”

“Mm,” Dazai hummed, tapping his spoon against the tray. “You’ve been here long enough to have heard the rumors or maybe even met him before. Give me the local gossip.” 

The younger boy shifted uncomfortably. “I… don’t know much. He was released a month after I came, but everyone says he’s… strange. Loud. Unpredictable. A lunatic, honestly.” He bit down on the last word like he didn’t want to use it but couldn’t think of anything else. “And dysfunctional. That’s what I’ve heard the staff call him, at least.”

Dazai swirled his spoon in the soup, watching it spin. “Loud and dysfunctional, huh. That narrows it down to… oh, half the building.”

“He’s worse,” Atsushi said quietly. “You’ll see.”

The brunette tilted his head. “Maybe I already have. He seemed very… fond of our dear Fyodor.” The boy looked up, startled. “Fond?” 

Dazai leaned forward on his elbows, chin in his hand. “Screaming his name down the hall like a lover’s reunion, he didn’t even notice my presence in front of Fyodor. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What exactly were they to each other?”

Atsushi frowned faintly, hesitant. Then his brows knit as he asked, almost cautiously. “Why do you care? …Are you jealous?” 

The question hung between them, not teasing, not mocking, just blunt, like only Atsushi could be.

Dazai laughed too quickly, too light. “Jealous? Don’t be ridiculous.” He waved his spoon in the air, grinning lazily. “I’m just curious, that’s all. Curiosity is my fatal flaw. Can’t help myself.”

Atsushi didn’t look convinced. His eyes stayed on him a moment longer, as if he’d stumbled onto something he wasn’t supposed to, but he didn’t press. He just went back to stabbing at the vegetables in his plate, silent again. The brunette leaned back in his chair with a sigh, watching the boy's fork scrape against plastic without putting too much attention into it, his own thoughts were spinning inside his mind. He needed to know more than just that, he was already considering going back into the record’s room just to read Nikolai’s files. 

He twirled the plastic spoon absently between his fingers, watching the way it caught the light. 

Jealous.

The word echoed louder in his head than it had when Atsushi said it, it stung in a place he didn’t want to look too closely at. Jealousy wasn’t his style. He wasn’t the type to gnash teeth over someone else’s attention. He knew that. 

And yet he’d spent the evening interrogating the boy sitting across from him about some lunatic in a straitjacket just because the man had called Fyodor’s name with a smile. 

His jaw tightened. He hated the thought, hated that it made his chest feel tight, hated that Fyodor hadn’t even blinked when Nikolai shouted at him. 

But worse than that, worse than the irritation, was the part of him that didn’t mind. That almost liked the way the feeling sat sharp and stirred in him, proof that something had gotten under his skin deep enough to sting. 

Dazai Osamu didn’t do attachment. He didn’t do envy. He didn’t care. 

Except… maybe he did. He hated it, but didn’t entirely mind it.