Heartbeat [Yosano Akiko & Dazai Osamu) ⋆ Bungou Stray Dogs ⋆ Drabble]trigger warning for a brief description of a suicide attempt, it's not just mentioned in passing like in some of the other drabbles in here because it's dazai we're talking about here (elaborated on more in the section for my thoughts). i don't go too in depth, however, because graphic descriptions of suicide whether they be successful or not make me somewhat uncomfortable too.
Yosano looked into the brunette's eyes as she finished the last stitch from his latest suicide attempt.
Dazai mumbled something incoherent under his breath and looked away. It wasn't like Dazai to be without words, without that ridiculous grin (
that fooled no one, Yosano thought), or without eye contact. But when it came to his interactions with her, this was entirely normal.
There was something about her, her fierce sense of self, her seemingly uncontrollable thirst for living, that scared him. It went against everything he'd built up for himself.
"Do you talk to anyone? Who do you trust outside of the agency?"Flashes of Odasaku rushed through his mind before he sent them hurtling back.
He beamed and played around with his arm, now stitched and taped back together,
"Aaah, I know I can trust you to always do such a fabulous job!"He stood with a flourish to make an exit, and felt something tug at his robe.
"Sit down. I'm not done with you yet."The moment fractured, the two eyed each other. The endless amount of time it took Dazai to reseat himself on the stool in his kitchen felt like slow motion through a whirlpool; shockingly cold, disorienting, and without mercy.
His eyes darkened,
"...and what aren't you done with?"He hated being cornered unexpectedly. He hated it almost as much as he hated himself, and he especially hated it when it was about how
much he hated himself.
Yosano closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She wasn't sure if this was a good idea. In fact, she knew it was a terrible one. But, these attempts were whittling away at her sanity, and while most of the rest of the agency had written Dazai off as a childish good-for-nothing with a flair for the dramatic, she knew all too well the horrors that haunted him. She couldn't let this go. If it just meant that even once, he hesitated, that would be enough for her.
Dazai sat still as a corpse, eyes deader still, and waited for Yosano to respond.
Inside, however, he was screaming and begging to be released from this moment.
The last time someone took any particular notice of him for more than what he put out in the world, they were murdered as a pawn for a larger game. Intellectually, Dazai knew the two weren't the same. Intellectually.
However, Yosano was no stranger to the workings of
Mori and the horrors that dwell beneath the warm glow of the daylight of Yokohama. If she prises too far... if she sees too much... if she cares...
Dazai stopped himself there.
Echoes of the echoes of gunshots, so final in their rhythm, rang in his mind as he found himself back in that dusty, bloodied mansion. He ran through the halls as quickly as his legs carried him, headed straight for that cacophony of death. He was always too late. If only he hadn't let Mori keep him for so long, if only he acted faster, if only he saw through the ultimate plot quicker, if only he sought to find protection for those little ones; if only, if only,
if only.
The only person to listen to him, even when he rambled purposeful nonsense. The only person to see him for more than the disgusting
"black blood" that ran through his veins. The only person to not let hierarchy get in the way. The only person he ever let in.
"...azai, Dazai?"Yosano handed him a tissue.
He looked down at it, dumbly, not quite sure what it was or what he was supposed to do with it. Something itched on his face, though, and when he lifted his hand to touch his cheek, he realised what it had been.
Yosano pulled Dazai up and guided him over to his futon. He followed without much expression, still lost in that waking dream.
She allowed him to feel his way onto the bed, where he first sat before descending onto his side, away from the pale sun of the spring. The light from the window created shadows that stretched long into the room. It covered Dazai's back like a blanket, but left his face and chest in chilly darkness that accentuated his thin frame. He was like a skeleton, like this. She wondered when he last ate. She sat near the end of the bed and looked down at her hands.
"I won't pressure you to say anything you don't want to, but I want to know why you're so desperate to leave," she says, quietly.
"Wake me from this oxidizing world of a dream," he mumbled into the pillow. It sounded hollow.
"...what do you expect to find when you wake?"Silence. Heartbeat.
"I believe you told someone once that we have possibilities, that we aren't omniscient. If you can see that potential in somebody else, why are you not drawn within that line as well?"Silence. Heartbeat.
"Let's say you open this door to eternal mystery and offer yourself, what or who do you expect to receive you?"Silence.
Heartbeat.
Yosano looked down at Dazai, barely recognisable, even for her, even after all those times before. His frame wrapped into itself, eyes were cast down. Brows suggested that he was searching for something, but she didn't know what. She couldn't begin to imagine
what.
Ever since Dazai stepped into the agency two years ago, he'd managed to make a mark a messy, wild, infuriating mark but a mark nevertheless. The first time he went missing for over a day, the entire agency threw themselves into trying to find him. However, by the fourth it started to become something of a joke. They stopped looking for him, calling after him. Stopped retracing his steps and breaking into his apartment.
It unnerved Yosano desperately. It happened so often that after awhile she was able to gauge how alarmed she needed to be by the little things Dazai would do. If they'd had a rather exhausting day of his antics, that was usually the sign of a passive attempt and she didn't need to get involved. If he'd been quieter than usual, that usually meant that he was off investigating something on his own and that he'd make it back eventually.
It was the days that he seemed, on the outside, "normal". "Relaxed". "Calm". Those were the days that really worried her. Talkative, congenial, willing to work with Kunikida... it was these days that she had to stitch him back up, pull him back to consciousness, soothe wounds. It was those days that she spent extra time keeping tabs on him. It was days like today, when she found him in his bathtub; lips blue, breath shallow, barely coherent. Heartbeat unnervingly slow. It was these days that his
"clean and painless suicide" didn't seem to matter. He'd try just about anything if it meant he wouldn't see tomorrow.
"When the flesh is weary, the spirit too gives up; and somewhere within the body a sense of indifference takes root," Dazai looked up at the ceiling, tracing the lines of the light hanging over him.
It was Yosano's turn to be silent.
"I don't have an answer for you. Or, at least one that you want," Dazai said finally, and turned his head to look at Yosano's shape at the end of his futon.
"It's not about what I want, Dazai. It's about what you need.""No one can give me what I need.""Not if you don't let them.""..."Yosano sighed,
"I'm staying the night. I'll have Kenji bring some fresh produce and I'll prepare something for you that isn't canned crab and sake. You stay there, I'll get the other futon out.""You don't have to do this, I'll be fine," he already knew it wasn't worth the argument.
"I don't have to do a lot of things. I want to do this," Yosano offered a playful smile and leaned over to gently brush Dazai's cheek with her palm,
"you'll find your spirit, I'll help you. And I don't give up easily.""I know."
Personal Thoughtstl;dr: this is basically yosano fixing/having a post-suicide-attempt talk with one dazai osamu. she may be a little bit of a sadist, but she's still a brilliant doctor who knows what she's doing; the people of the agency are truly in good hands.
bungou stray dogs may paint dazai as a suicidal maniac and some of the attempts in the series may be shown in a humorous light, as he is based off of the real author dazai osamu who attempted suicide many, many times; but once again suicide in real life is certainly nothing to take lightly. this is just a little thing about one of the not-so-funny suicide attempts... sure, he may do it to mess with the agency members sometimes, but i feel as though he probably has seriously tried to take his life at least once. anyone familiar with his character knows that what he puts up in front of people most of the time is a well-put-together facade he may provide a lot of comic relief but that doesn't change that he's for certain one of the darkest characters in the series thus far.
this was written as a challenge request from a friend: write two bungou stray dogs characters interacting and make references to both the manga, as well as the works by or about the authors the bsd characters used were based off of (so in this case, the two authors would be dazai osamu and yosano akiko). i won't explicitly point them out, but i will list the references made:
"
Dazai Osamu and the Dark Era" Light Novel
"
Bungou Stray Dogs" manga, chapter 35
"
Bungou Stray Dogs" manga, chapter 65
"
Akutagawa and Dazai: Instances of Literary Adaptation"
"
River of Stars: Selected Poems of Yosano Akiko"
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reposted from another thread. 
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