Chapter Text
According to ancient Greek mythology, the olive tree was a gift by the goddess Athena to the city of Athens, when a competition between her and the god Poseidon took place in order to decide on the city’s patronage. The legend says that Poseidon planted his trident in the sacred rock of the Acropolis creating a salt spring.
“Give me a few days of peace in your arms — I need it terribly. I’m ragged, worn, exhausted. After that I can face the world.”
A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953, Henry Miller
Don’t follow me, you’ll end up in my arms.
SLOW DANCING IN THE DARK, Joji
Revenge. What a complicated word that is, what a double-edged sword. When Atsushi looks at Dazai and Chuuya, he’s always wondering: what may cause a person to want to get revenge over someone else with such devotion? Everything they know about, everything they can experience and feel comes from vengeance. Don’t they get tired of it? Of always making up plans and setting traps for each other? Do they realize that none of their feelings are sincere? That they all come from the greed to hurt each other as bad as they can? For a long time, Atsushi doesn’t know what revenge is nor he does want to find out. But eventually, life makes him. Faith has its own ways of setting people on the right paths.
But twenty-four hours before this happens, Atsushi is not aware of anything. He’s in the dorms, studying and revising with Akutagawa sitting next to him. Aku smells nice, of his casual perfume and a bit of cigarette smoke. Atsushi’s gotten used to this smell by now and he can tell it from the dozens of others even with his eyes closed. Sometimes he gets detached, looking at the opposite wall, wondering how long it’s been since he got the last call from the hospital. He’s there almost around the clock but as soon as he’s not he gets nervous and wants to come back. The doctor’s words just won’t leave his head.
“Did someone hit her in the past?”
What happened in the past? Even though it wasn’t something Atsushi could help with, even though it was there long before he came, still, he desperately wants to find out. It’s his mother. An inevitable part of his life. How can he bear to live in such darkness? And how can he possibly bring the past into the light?
“You got distracted again,” Akutagawa remarks in a calm voice and closes his book. “What are you thinking about?”
“Nothing,” he lies. “Let’s take a walk.”
And so they do. As usual, their walk consists of quiet wandering across the still undiscovered small blocks of the city, with Akutagawa telling different stories and Atsushi listening to him, wide-eyed. He never gets tired of what Akutagawa has to say. And Akutagawa, in his turn, finds himself a devoted listener once in a while. Dazai is almost never around these days. But Atsushi is not a substitution, he’s never been. They’re just something completely different to each other.
In one of the quietest parts of the city, there’s a small human-made garden that connects several buildings of one of the fanciest housing complexes. The tall houses are hovering above them like aliens made of glass as they take a sit on one of the benches, Akutagawa looking up at the cherry tree branches that are now in bloom. He doesn’t hide his hands in his pockets, and Atsushi notices that. During all that time they’ve spent together apart from everyone else, he’s been picking up his habits like small cherry petals which are now threatening to fall on his shoulders. It’s a rare thing to see Ryunosuke smile. It’s almost impossible to make him laugh. But in this stillness, this indifference in his face Atsushi has learned to tell things apart. Akutagawa can be irritated, rude, or tired, but right now he’s nothing of these. He’s calm and relaxed, which makes it a perfect moment for Atsushi to put his hand on his shoulder, his cold cheek to Aku’s warm skin, covered with a layer of thin fabric.
Akutagawa startles but doesn’t brush him off. Atsushi feels him slightly turn his head as if he’s trying to look at him.
“People,” he says, “don’t usually dare to touch me,” makes Atsushi hold his breath in premonition of something that will break his heart. “But you,” Akutagawa smiles – oh holy crap, he smiles, – Atsushi understands it from the soft note in his voice and a slight trembling of his chest. “You are a brave one.”
Finally, he brushes Atsushi off in a soft movement, making him look himself in the eye.
“Or a silly one,” he finishes, no trace of a smile left on his face by now.
Atsushi himself doesn’t know who he is. But one thing he knows for sure.
“I want to kiss you,” he says, braver than he thought he would, and by these words, he tells everything. All his sleepless nights squeezed into one simple sentence. And as he leans forward to do it, Akutagawa touches his lips with his fingertips. “Sorry,” is one of the few things he can say out loud without stuttering; exactly as he was taught in the orphanage.
“You know,” Ryunosuke says in a quiet voice, “that you’re a dead man if you do this?”
What is he supposed to say?
“Yes.”
And then Akutagawa smiles once more.
“Okay then.”
Their kiss is like two ships crashing into each other. Some destructive force makes Atsushi hold his breath, touching Akutagawa’s neck with both of his hands, squeezing it firmer, probably firm enough to make it break. But Akutagawa doesn’t even shudder, kissing him back with a reverence Atsushi has never felt before. As if his cold and detached image was only an image after all. As if he was waiting for this exact moment much longer than Atsushi did.
When they break apart, Akutagawa is still squeezing the fabric of his shirt in his hands, looking right at him. Something in his eyes makes Atsushi wonder whether this moment is even real. What if he wakes up at any given second? If it is a dream, he begs it to last at least a bit longer so that he can be more confident when he repeats the exact same moment in reality.
But it’s not a dream. And Akutagawa’s lips are still a bit wet from their kiss, shining slightly in the spring sunlight that falls on his face, making him frown.
“Now let go of me, white shirt,” he says almost in a whisper.
Atsushi doesn’t want to but he does. They sit like this, in silence, like awkward teenagers, for some time, both looking into nowhere. Atsushi bites his lips, trying to measure his own feelings. Has anything changed? Probably not, except for some unspoken truth now being let out. And he still has one more to unveil.
The next day is Friday, and the hospital halls are almost deserted after lunchtime. Atsushi is walking slowly through one of the halls filled with artificial light. He can’t stop smiling, remembering their kiss with Akutagawa from yesterday when suddenly he’s brought back to Earth by a sudden figure appearing in front of him like a ghost.
He almost stumbles in place and frowns, looking up just to see a tall, thin woman, probably in her early forties. What catches his attention is her head of bright red hair which looks like fire. The look on her face, estranged and almost hostile, makes Atsushi hold his breath. But there’s something more about her face. It looks… familiar. And her dark eyes, filled with some emotion he can’t read through. The dark circles under them probably make the woman look older than she actually is. Her pale thin lips with no touch of lipstick. Everything about her is both too known and completely foreign. And only after she finally passes by him without saying a word, only after Atsushi steps into his mother’s hospital room with an intense feeling burdening his chest, he finally recognizes her.
“Who was that?” He asks anyway. “Why was she visiting you?”
His mother is pale as usual, but she manages to wipe the tears off her face and sit straight on the bed, her back pressed against the wall.
“Sit down, Atsushi.”
He obeys, sitting next to her on the bed, not looking away from her face even for a second. He’s never seen her cry before. It crushes his heart into million pieces at once.
“It was Chuuya’s mother, right?” He can’t bear the silence anymore. “What was she doing here?”
“Fuku Nakahara, yes,” she nods, taking a deep breath. “I was a housemaid in their estate long before I even met you.”
Atsushi is not a fool. His mother doesn’t even have to elaborate, as the puzzle pieces in his head are slowly starting to add up. Did someone hit her in the past? Did someone hit her in the past? Did someone hit her in the past? DID SOMEONE HIT HER IN THE PAST?
“But he wants to kill you. Aren’t you scared of him?”
“I am.”
Fucking monsters.
“She beat you up, didn’t she?” Atsushi can feel the rage slowly starting to boil in his entire body.
“Atsushi, my child, I don’t want to talk about this,” his mother shakes her head. “It’s the past.”
“No, it’s not,” he tries not to raise his voice but he just can’t. Everything has shifted in his head, messed up. But at the same time, the picture is complete now. The only piece he couldn’t find in order to finally see it clearly. Wandering in his own doubts and guesses, he wanted to believe that Chuuya was innocent after all, that everything they spoke about with Dazai was a lie. But it’s not after all. “Chuuya is… my friend,” the word is bitter in his mouth but he says it anyway. “How can I keep looking him in the eye knowing what his mother did to mine? That’s why you left them. That’s why you never talk about your previous job. That’s why you’re in this goddamn bed right now.”
“Atsushi,” she shushes him in a soft voice, finding his hand on the bedsheets and covering it with her warm palm. “Your anger won’t help it. And I don’t mind you being friends with Chuuya.”
Atsushi takes his hand away and squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. He can’t bear this, can’t just let it go and pretend that it never happened. Dazai’s family, his family, and probably even Akutagawa’s family at some point… They all have suffered because of the Nakaharas. And he’s supposed to just let them get away with this? No fucking way.
“But there is something you can do,” his mother speaks again before he brings himself to say at least a word. “Even if you decide not to – because Nakahara Chuuya is your friend – you’ve already saved me by just being here.”
But Atsushi shakes his head once again.
“Tell me,” he almost begs. “I’ll do anything if it soothes your pain at least a bit.”
“It’s not about me,” his mother sighs heavily. “It’s about Osamu Dazai.”
“What about him?” Atsushi frowns.
His mother reaches for her bag left on the nightstand with her trembling hand. She looks so weak it’s almost unbearable to watch her without feeling this thick and devastating pity. But right now Atsushi feels nothing but sheer rage filling each cell of his body. If he can do something to take revenge, he will. Anything it may take, he’ll do all of it.
After looking for something in her bag, his mother finally takes out a small notebook covered in wrinkled leather. It looks old even at first sight, its pages thick and yellowed from time. His mother holds the notebook in her hands for some time, just looking at the cover without saying a word. There are no inscriptions on it, no hints at a person it may belong to. Finally, she hands it over to Atsushi, and he takes it, unsure, his fingertips brushing over cold leather.
“I was so devoted to the Nakaharas, and especially to Fuku,” his mother says in a voice weak from tears, “that once I swore I’d never tell their secrets to anyone,” she laughs quietly, the laugh bittersweet. “But that time is long gone now. I never thought that she would visit me again, that she would even remember I exist. But after I saw her today, after I looked in her eyes and saw that nothing has changed, that she’s become even worse than she once was… I no longer see the point in my blind devotion. I don’t want to be their maid, their guard dog, their slave till the end of my days.”
Atsushi squeezes the notebook tighter in his trembling hands, still too afraid to open it.
“You can read it if you want, I no longer care,” his mother shrugs. “This is the only thing I managed to take with me when I was leaving. My gut didn’t fool me back then after all. I knew that I’d need it one day.”
“Can you tell me what I am going to read?” Atsushi asks in a quiet voice.
His mother shakes her head.
“I can’t,” she almost whispers. “But eventually, you’ll know who to give this to.”
Only after his mother is put to sleep with her daily medication and Atsushi is left to sit in the hall, in complete silence and solitude, he recalls that she actually named the exact person he needs to give the notebook to. Osamu Dazai. After Atsushi reads it, he’ll know where to go.
In this nightmare, someone’s hands are putting a crown on his head. Chuuya doesn’t know why exactly it is a nightmare, but it just feels like one. The one leaving him short of breath in a voiceless cry for help when he wakes up. The crown is big, elegant, and shiny, like the ones they put on true kings of their nations. But Chuuya is not a king, so why must he live and behave like one? Who’s dream it is?
That day, Chuuya has the cruelest fight with his mother ever. Like in each one of the arguments she once had with his late father, Fuku breaks dishes and slams the doors shut, screaming her soul out each time Chuuya even tries to say a thing. One may think that this happens because he ran away with Dazai just a couple of hours before. But the truth is that his escape was only a spark setting a pile of accusations aflame.
“You’re not going anywhere with that freak again!” his mother is hovering above him like a dark cloud, making him feel the smallest he’s ever been. Her fascinating magical ability. “He will destroy you, how can’t you understand that? He will stain you!”
People tend to stain the purest things right after they see them.
Chuuya looks down and up at her once more, his voice the quietest it has ever sounded.
“What if I want to be stained?”
The hatred in Fuku’s eyes is destructive.
“By him?” Is the one thing she’s never understood.
“By myself, mother.”
If being stained means having nothing to do with nobility for the rest of his life, then there’s no stain purer than this.
The next morning, he wakes up from the doorbell ringing downstairs. He rubs his eyes with his fists, his entire face burning after he cried himself to sleep the night before. He’s waiting for his mother to open the door, but the ringing goes on without stopping, so loud and intense that Chuuya feels a knot of worry tying up in his stomach. Finally, he raises himself to his feet, almost stumbling upon the bag on the floor. Right, he wanted to run away. But where to? There’s still no clear plan in his head, although deep down in his consciousness he hopes that he can follow Dazai’s path. Move to the dorms until the end of the school and then just… away. As far as he can from this damned town.
Sliding across the corridors quietly with his breath bated, he soon finds out that his mother is nowhere to be seen. Sighing in relief, he approaches the entrance door and looks through the peephole, seeing a man he’s never met before. Skinny and dark-haired, probably in his thirties or early forties, he stands in front of the door and keeps pushing the doorbell button.
“Who are you?” Chuuya asks, trying to steady the trembling in his voice.
“Chuuya Nakahara?” the man stops ringing and calls him by his full name in a calm, almost friendly tone. “I have a delivery for you.”
A delivery?
“Who is it from?” Chuuya asks, suspicious, still not opening the door. “I haven’t ordered anything.”
The man seems to be hesitating a bit before answering.
“It’s a gift,” after a short silence, he adds: “The sender preferred to stay anonymous.”
The whole thing sounds like a huge scam. What if it’s paparazzi again? What if they’re trying to hunt him down, taking a photograph of him in his most vulnerable, drained-out state? But why would they need to do something like that? There hasn’t been a single scandal that would concern the Nakahara family for the past decade. Perhaps… someone has found out about him and Dazai? Chuuya holds his breath. But it’s impossible, right? Except for Dazai himself, there’s nothing else who could’ve been snitching. But why would Dazai do something like that? It’s completely irrational as it would damage his own reputation, too.
Probably tired of the long silence, the man behind the door sighs casually and squat’s down for a second, then rises to his feet again.
“I’ve left it by the door,” he says. “Have a good day.”
Without saying a word, Chuuya waits for him to go away, disappearing around the corner of their neighbors’ house, and only then the curiosity takes over him. He opens the door slightly and sees a thick package wrapped in beige craft paper. He picks it off the floor and shuts the door right away. He heads back upstairs then, hiding in his room, lamenting the fact that his door doesn’t have a lock on it. I want some privacy, he told his mother once, amidst one of his teenage breakdowns. Privacy always leads to betrayal, she said back and then they never came across the subject again.
Now that he has some time alone, he rips the wrapping open, and the thing he sees inside is… unexpected. A book with a dark leather cover, scratched and cracked in such a way that one cannot predict whether it was done on purpose or not. There is also a small blank envelope that falls to the floor, and Chuuya startles, reaching for it and opening it to see a letter inside. With his breath bated, he starts reading.
“To Chuuya Nakahara.
Happy belated birthday. I’m sorry that I couldn’t greet you in person, but you have to believe that neither of us really needs it. If you’re wondering whether we know each other, we don’t, and I prefer to keep it like that.
This is my gift to you. I’m sure you will want to ask how and where I got this, but I’m afraid I cannot give you the answer. This diary I give to you is the only thing left from your late grandfather, the man who went insane and choked his own sick wife to death, your father barely born in his cradle. Your mother, a woman full of greed for power and fame, burned the rest of his belongings a long time ago. This is the only key that will help you find out the truth and end your bloodshed without hurting Osamu Dazai or yourself.
There are photographs between some of the pages so you know the notebook is not fake. Your grandfather had been keeping a diary since his teenage years and until the day of his death. In it, he describes in detail what he did to the Dazai family, accusing his closest friend of a murder he never committed. Take your time to read it all. I’m sure you’ll do the right thing in the aftermath.
Best regards.”
No sign. No name. Nothing. Another side of the letter is completely blank. Chuuya doesn’t even notice the way he’s shivering from head to toe, the tears already welling up in his eyes as he takes the diary in his hands, opening it to the very first page. He holds his breath as he reads the first note, the keeper’s full name and the date. More than half a century ago. He slides onto the cold floor and sits down, his back pressed to the bed. It takes a great effort to read as tears continue to fill his eyes, but he manages to go through the first pages without a break.
“Shuuji waved to me today from his yard. We both knew that lunchtime approached so we couldn’t allow ourselves to leave our houses. But his smile was so cheerful and inviting that I gave in. Laughing and fighting, we rolled on the grass warmed by the blinding sunlight, the rumbling in our bellies louder than our voices.”
“Shuuji read his writing to me for the first time today. He said he was afraid of my reaction, but I could’ve never guessed that from how calm and confident his voice sounded. Looking me straight in the eye, he was reading the most beautiful piece of writing I’ve ever heard in my life. After I said what I was thinking about it, he breathed out and told me he was going to skip lunches and bedtimes only to finish it as soon as possible and dedicate the story to me. I wanted to embrace him so bad my arms ached. But I never did.”
After several pages, there is an almost five-year-long time gap. The wartime, Chuuya recalls. He takes a break and stands up, going in circles around the room for some time, trying to steady his trembling hands. There’s no right time, he reminds himself, you do it now or never. And so he drops himself back to the floor, resuming.
“People are right when they say that the war changes you. It distorts you in unimaginable ways. Although I was lucky enough not to be sent to the very pit of hell, I saw some things, terrifying things, and found myself affected by them thereafter.”
There is a long blank space on the page, with only a small inscription at the very bottom of it.
“I think I’m going insane.”
It takes a great effort to keep reading, as Chuuya is afraid of what the further pages may hold for him. Still, he takes a deep shuddering breath and turns the page, seeing a small wrinkled photograph on it. His grandfather’s only picture from the military, perhaps. His face is calm and emotionless, he looks a lot like Chuuya’s father. The bitter and unwanted resemblance.
“My parents made me meet this girl, Akihiro. They are afraid another war may unravel soon and so they insist that I marry her and have an heir before I can possibly be killed. That’s nonsense if you ask me. I don’t even love her. How can I love a girl I just met for the first time in my life? But they say she’s a researcher and she has a bright future ahead of her. I nod and smile. I smile and nod. But as soon as I close my eyes I see myself slitting both of their throats in their sleep.”
The several following pages are torn out so the next thing Chuuya comes across is the wedding photographs he takes in both of his hands, taking in his grandparents’ faces. A cheerful and happy smile on his grandmother’s face and a calm, blank emptiness in his grandfather’s look. There’s no long entry to this day, only the date handwritten on the back of the photograph and several short lines written with a pencil on the page itself. As he reads them, Chuuya recognizes a poem by William Butler Yeats, An Irish Airman foresees his Death.
“I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.”
On the next page comes another note, almost a year after.
“Akihiro enlightened my days with a child, a beautiful boy, Kensuke. He has quite an attitude, I may say. Stubborn like his mother.”
“My dad,” Chuuya whispers, looking closely at the small picture of a baby in his cradle. He takes the picture out of the notebook, stuffing it in his pocket. In a moment he will find out that this is the last sane note left in his grandfather’s diary. After this page come a bunch of wrinkled, yellowed pages with dark stains of some liquids all over them. Some of them are even burnt as if someone was bringing a lighter to their corners. There are also drawings made with gray pencil: most of them incomprehensible, creepy like those the one may see in those psychological articles and records on particularly difficult schizophrenia patients. Chuuya quickly turns them over before he finds the fragments of later notes. One of them makes him hold his breath and then breathe out again almost convulsively.
“Today I killed Akihiro.”
The next page.
“Am I a monster?”
The next.
“Is it truly over?”
Another one.
“Forgive me, the love of my life.”
One more.
“Shuuji.”
Chuuya wipes away the tears that drop from his face on the paper. The ink starts to blur.
“I deceived myself, made believe I loved her. But Shuuji, if you ever read this, you are the person I have never needed to fool myself into being in love with.”
“I’m sorry, Shuuji.”
“I didn’t have to call for you, Shuuji. I was in a panic. And when the maid spotted us in the room, I lost myself. The exact moment you were checking Akihiro’s pulse. I’m sorry. Oh my god. I’m so sorry. I didn’t have to say all those things. But I kept saying them over and over again. To other maids, to the police, in the court, staring you right in the eye. What did I do? I’m sorry.”
The next pages are just a scattering of these I’m-sorrys repeating over and over again. There are so many of them, Chuuya gets lost between the lines. Till the last page, there’s nothing else except for “I’m sorry,” the handwriting becoming messier and messier with every single word. Finally, he reaches the end and goes numb for what feels like an hour before closing the notebook. There’s nothing left in him by now. No anger, no tears. Just a deep and devouring emptiness he blacks out with in his bed, holding the notebook in his arms.
Chuuya finds Dazai in his dorm room. His hands are trembling as he knocks – once, twice, thrice. Finally, Dazai opens the door. What took you so long?
“Can I come in?”
“Always.”
Chuuya brings his bags, nothing much he’d like to take with him from that damned house. If he could he’d burn every single thing he has to ashes. He’d burn himself just to ease this pain and this guilt at least a little bit.
“What’s with the bags?” Dazai asks in a concerned voice, helping him carry them and put them on the bed. As much as he doesn’t want to, Chuuya tells him the whole story avoiding the diary part till the end. Finally, when he goes quiet, Dazai looks at him for some time with an unreadable look on his face. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” Chuuya nods.
“Are you going to move to the dorms?” Dazai asks, looking over his bags. Probably he knows that Chuuya has brought not even half of everything he possesses. Probably he knows the reason why he didn’t bring the rest.
“I don’t know yet,” Chuuya shakes his head and nods on the bed so that Dazai sits next to him. He reads the gesture clearly as usual and obeys, giving him a worried look. “I have to give you something. But… don’t ask, let me explain.”
Dazai nods, patient.
“Of course.”
With a deep sigh, Chuuya reaches for one of the bags behind his back and takes the notebook out. It’s still unbearable to even touch it, it feels like lava to his trembling fingers. He looks at the blank cover for some time, thinking of how he can say everything that’s on his mind out loud. After all, he squeezes it into one simple phrase.
“You were right,” he bites his lip in an attempt not to let out a scream of despair.
“About what?” Dazai frowns, looking at the notebook, alert.
“Everything,” Chuuya shuts his eyes and opens them again. “I don’t exactly know how this thing even ended up being mine. But it’s not… really mine anymore. And so I want to give it to you. As my… apology. If you ever accept it.”
“Chuuya, I don’t understand,” Dazai shakes his head. “What’s with this book? You’re trembling.”
“It’s not just a book,” Chuuya whispers. “It’s my grandfather’s diary. His confession. He described the exact way in which he killed my grandmother here. Along with his intentions, although… although it’s quite clear that he wasn’t a sane man.”
Dazai is silent for so long that it almost becomes unbearable. Chuuya is ready to scream just to fill this silence with anything.
“Oh… fuck,” Dazai finally sighs, taking the notebook from his hands, unsure. “Why are you giving this to me?”
What a stupid question to ask.
“Because it’s the least I can do?” He shrugs. “Because I want everyone to know the truth about my goddamn family. This is the most disgusting part of being noble. I have to ask not only for your forgiveness but for that of other people. The people I probably even don’t know exist.”
Dazai says nothing, just holding the notebook in his hands for some time, not daring to open it and read even the first page. He looks calm but tense at the same time as if he’s hesitating about what to do next. Will he accept it? Will he use it to finally get rid of that dirty stigma on his family name? He would be a fool for not doing so.
Chuuya closes his eyes and leans forward, hiding his face in Dazai’s shoulder. He feels completely devastated. This is how people usually feel when something they believed in their whole life is proven to be a lie from the very beginning. The truth drummed into his head by his mother since his early years isn’t the truth after all. And it’s a burden even heavier than the duty to protect his family name. A burden of asking for forgiveness when this name turns out to be stained in blood.
“I’m sorry, Dazai,” he whispers into the fabric of his shirt, tears streaming down his face.
“I’m sorry, Shuuji.”
Dazai hugs him gently and presses his lips to his hair, the notebook put aside on the bed.
“It’s okay,” he whispers. “You don’t have to apologize for something you didn’t do, remember?” He then softly touches his chin with his fingertips, making Chuuya look up at him. He smiles. “Leave it to the noble boys.”
Revenge is a twisted thing. It’s cruel. It makes people do things they were never aware they were capable of. And revenge is also blinding. So when Chuuya was cloud-eyed by his own greed to take vengeance, he wasn’t able to see that Dazai had the exact same thing on his mind. Perhaps even the crueler version of it.
When he opens the door of his dorm room and sees Atsushi standing there, his face angered, confused, devastated, everything at once, he already knows that this is the moment.
“It’s urgent,” is the only thing Atsushi says. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
And then Atsushi tells him everything he found out today. About his mother and how she worked for the Nakaharas for a long time, not being brave enough to just leave. About everything she’d gone through before she managed to escape. About the notebook Dazai’s been waiting to put his hands on for so long.
“You were right,” he says in the end, his voice trembling from silent rage. “You were right from the start. I hate how every living soul is against you, against us, while there is only one person to blame.”
Dazai shakes his head.
“No,” he feels a confused gaze on his cheek. “Chuuya has nothing to do with it. He’s rather… a vessel. As every heir of the noble family is.”
“I… I don’t understand,” Atsushi shakes his head, looking at the notebook in his hands. “You don’t want it?”
Dazai is quick to explain himself.
“I do,” he says, trying to keep his eyes out of it. “And I appreciate that you’re willing to give it to me. I just don’t want you to blame Chuuya, okay? The Nakaharas are guilty, yes. But not him. Let’s keep him out of this.”
Atsushi closes his eyes and opens them again with a sigh. He’s sure having mixed feelings about this, just because he’s not quite familiar with the very core of nobility. Like many other people, he is going to blame anyone the media tells him to blame. It’s a very human thing to do, though, almost adorably predictable.
When Atsushi hands him the notebook, Dazai fights back a triumphant smile. Everything has played out exactly as they planned from the very beginning. All aces are now up his sleeves. He only has to use them.
Atsushi hugs himself tightly, looking thankful as if Dazai has just given him not only his jacket but the whole world. The garden is still deserted and quiet around them, everyone has probably rushed to the classes after lunchtime.
“Everything will be fine as long as you don’t tell him my secret, okay?”
“And what if I have to?”
Dazai smiles for a second, diving into the memories of his past. His mother and him, both sitting on the same floor in the living room, a scattering of notebooks and newspaper clippings all around them. His mother smokes a cigarette and smiles as she’s reciting parts of the old articles out loud. “Dazai Shizuko accused of engaging in an extramarital intimate relationship with a family’s close friend. Rumor has it…”. She claps her hands loudly then, taking a cigarette out of her mouth. “Rumor!” She says. “I wonder who was making up those rumors, huh?” She smiles then, bitterly, looking Dazai right in the eye. He doesn’t need to ask to know who she’s hinting at. The Nakaharas, a family of petty, miserable gossipers who were so lonely and wretched from generation to generation that they didn’t have a better idea than just to conceal their own imperfections with rumors about the Dazai bloodline. Each one of the Dazai’s ancestors had fallen victim to that. On every secular dinner, every party they attended, they never wasted a chance to say something dirty about them, to let the whisper infest the whole room. After that, the consequences were hard to predict. Four marriages broken, some of the far relatives disowned and distanced themselves from them, giving up the Dazai family name once and for all. And then, that silly, dirty, unpredicted murder… it became the last straw.
“I hate all of them,” his mother whispers as he drops a clipping back to the floor, a cloud of cigarette smoke escaping her dry and thin lips. “I wish each one of them died suffering.”
Dazai takes a notebook from Atsuhi’s soft, cold hands. He eyes the cover for some time, running his fingertips across it, touching the dark leather, scattered with the cracks of time. There it is. His answer. His key. His revenge. Finally, the thing he’s craved the most is in his hands, and he can put an end to everything once and for all.
“I can’t understand how some of us could still stay friends with the Nakaharas,” his mother shakes her head, looking pensively at the wall. “With all the things they said and done, with all the ways they hurt our history and our pride. We should’ve distanced ourselves from them as soon as it started. And yet, we continued to live in the neighboring estates, that goddamn olive tree separating us like a border. Why would we befriend some of the Nakaharas? Why would we read our novels and poems to them? Why would we play with them in the garden? Why would we fall in love with them?”
Without even opening the first page, Dazai hands the notebook back to Atsushi, met with his puzzled gaze.
“What is it?” Atsushi almost whispers, he looks like he’s almost about to cry, how desperate he is. “You changed your mind?”
“No,” Dazai is quick to reassure him, touching his shoulder softly with his hand. “But you know yourself who needs it more than me right now,” and he knows that Atsushi will obey anything he tells him to do. He always does.
“Maybe our family just doesn’t know how to hate,” his mother shrugs, after all, her gaze bitter, her eyes almost welling up with tears.
But Dazai quickly shakes his head.
“We do,” he does. After a moment of silence, he lowers his eyes to look at the bandages on both of his hands. Even now, when they’re finally farther than ever from the Nakahara’s new estate, their presence is still like a dark ghost hovering above all of their heads. What can they do to get rid of it? How can they finally cut down that goddamn olive tree once and for all? A symbol of peace and reconciliation, the old Greek myth has it. But in Dazai’s case, it’s nothing else than a symbol of revenge.
“I’ll show them how we can hate, mother.”
One day in June, when Dazai is sitting on the bed in his room, waiting almost impatiently for the midnight he turns seventeen, his mother opens the door and greets him with this unchanging soft smile of hers. Usually, they don’t give birthday gifts beforehand, but today something is different, Dazai can sense it, he can see it in the curious look his mother gives him when she sits down next to him, touching his hand gently.
“I talked to someone today,” she starts, not looking at him. “She’s a very close acquaintance of the Nakahara family.”
Dazai frowns, and his anticipation quickly grows into worry. He’s not fond of the conversations that start with the Nakahara name. But his mother gives him a reassuring smile and squeezes his hand firmer.
“She will help us,” she says almost in a whisper, her voice joyful and relieved. “She will prove us innocent.”
As much as he wants to smile and sigh in relief himself, Dazai still has too many questions to ask.
“But… how? Did she find any evidence?”
His mother simply nods and closes her eyes, almost in triumph.
“Yes,” she sighs. “And she will give it to us.”
One of the unchangeable laws of everything existing in the world is that the paths that seem the shortest at first turn out to be the most twisted and thorned in the end. When Dazai, barely seventeen, thinks that he can finally change everything once and for all with one simple diary in his hands, the diary never makes it to him. And it’s another very human flaw that causes so much injustice and so much pain. It’s… devotion.
The woman who worked for the Nakaharas most of her adult years, the same woman who eventually turns out to be Atsushi Nakajima’s mother, changes her mind at the very last moment and keeps the diary to herself. Even Dazai’s mother, with those purest intentions of hers, cannot convince her to do the right thing. Because she has her own idea of what is right.
“But… why?” Dazai is wandering across the room, almost running in circles, trying to ignore the itching on his arms and wrists, cut almost to slivers the previous night. “Does she really love the Nakaharas that much? Or is she just afraid of them?”
To this, his mother has the only thing to say.
“Fear is the form of love.”
Dazai shakes his head, biting his lips in an attempt to think of anything that could help.
“Can we steal it?” He blurts out in despair. “We need it more than she does!”
But his mother smiles and shakes her head.
“We could,” she says nevertheless. “But I can’t put your reputation at stake. It’s already been hurt pretty badly.”
Dazai can’t sleep, can’t study, can’t do anything without thinking about that diary every given second. How can he ever give up his attempts to get it? But eventually, he has to. There’s no way for them to take it by force without ruining their name even more. It only depends on the decision of one person now. It will happen only when she decides that it’s time. If she ever does. And before that, Dazai has to wait. Stretch time. Keep his posture noble-straight. Because he is a good son.
What if the time never comes?
He doesn’t want to think about this. It will. Everything he craves always ends up in his arms.
One of the days in late spring, Dazai finds Chuuya reading in the garden. He approaches him silently, sitting next to him and putting one of his hands on top of his, making Chuuya shiver and smile, looking up at him. Now, when there’s no more enmity between them, when Dazai has finally got his chance to justify his whole bloodline, it seems more than strange, sitting like this together, in the same garden they met in for the first time.
“How do you feel?” He asks, looking at Chuuya attentively, trying to guess it himself.
“I’m okay,” although it’s not completely true. Nobody can be okay after they have renounced their family name. Dazai could never do such a thing, it takes so much bravery he doesn’t have in himself. “As long as I live in the dorms and don’t come back to that house, I will be fine.”
Dazai looks into the distance when suddenly he notices Atsushi’s thin figure standing far away. Atsushi is still in his jacket, the one he’d never returned, and Dazai had to buy himself a new one. Even from a distance, he can see his gaze clearly, a clean canvas of resignation, as if he was waiting for everything to turn out this way. After Atsushi took the notebook from him to secretly plant it to Chuuya, he asked one thing that had Dazai taken aback.
“How can you hate somebody and be so in love with them at the same time?”
Following was the longest silence Dazai had ever taken to think something over.
“I don’t hate Chuuya,” he gave in after all. “But I do hate his past.”
“But you also believe he’s not like the other people from his family, do you?” Atsushi went on, and Dazai smiled.
“I do,” he agreed. “I tend to think he still has the chance to break this damned vicious circle he’s in.”
“Did something happen?” Chuuya’s concerned voice rips him out of the memories. He blinks, and in the next moment, Atsushi’s gone as if he was nothing more than a mirage.
“No, not really,” Dazai shakes his head and forces himself to smile. Keeping silent for some time, he sighs and looks back at Chuuya. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about asking you out on a date.”
With a frown, Chuuya closes his book and puts it away.
“A date?” He sounds the most unsure he’s ever been.
But Dazai just nods casually.
“We’ve never been on one, as I recall,” he smiles. “So before this goddamn sunlight far above us burns us all to ashes, I want to go on a date with the person I love.”
Later, as he’s getting ready for the night, he corrects himself in his mind. He doesn’t exactly love Chuuya yet, but he loves the image of him, loves the way he’s both witty and naive like a first grader. Dazai loves the fact that, as much as he tries to, he can never talk Chuuya into believing something he doesn’t want to believe in. And now, given the fact that Chuuya left his home once and for all, the fact that they both live in the dorms now, the fact that Dazai truly wants to introduce Chuuya to his parents once they both graduate and become mature enough to move in together, he knows that revenge can also grow into something permanent and beautiful.
As he’s talking to his therapist, the same one he’s been occasionally talking to for more than five years now, for the first time in his life he’s not fighting the urge to cut himself. In fact, the latest scars have almost gone pale by now, and soon he’ll probably be able to take the bandages off his arms once and for all.
“Are you satisfied now?” Fukuzawa asks him, genuinely interested. “Your name is good and glorious all across the morning newspapers. I even bought one for myself earlier today, if you ask. The Dazai family to be proven innocent, one diary changes the course of history that has been going on for decades.”
Dazai smiles gently, looking down at his hands.
“I’m not satisfied, sensei,” he shakes his head and looks him back in the eye once more. “I’m happy.”
That evening, when they meet not far away from the campus, and Dazai has the entire date planned out beforehand, he greets Chuuya with a thin branch of an olive tree, and Chuuya recites to him a draft of a poem he wrote after Dazai asked him about it for the very first time.
It’s beautiful, he wants to say as he breathes out, slightly trembling. But instead, he says another thing:
“I really couldn’t predict that you’d take the entire poem thing seriously.”
Taken aback, Chuuya shoves him in the shoulder in a light but determined gesture.
“I fucking hate you,” he says as he crumples a small piece of paper he’s been holding in his hand, his eyes wide open.
He doesn’t really mean it.
This time, when Dazai and his mother sit on the floor in their living room together, there are completely different newspaper clippings scattered around them. And it’s now Dazai who picks them up one by one, reading each headline out loud, making his mother’s smile grow wider with every single word.
“I can’t believe it,” she whispers right into her cigarette, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. “We finally made it. That goddamn bitch Fuku is probably tearing her hair out right now.”
Dazai can’t help but smile himself, nodding, still looking over the paper in his hands again and again, as if something completely different can suddenly appear on it. As if he’s dreaming. Then his mother looks right back at him, thinking about something and biting her lips. Even though she always demanded from him more than he could give, she often tried to show how proud of him she was. And it’s all over her face once again right now.
“Stay for the dinner?” She asks, eyes full of hope.
But Dazai shakes his head.
“I can’t,” he says simply, standing up.
He’s pretty familiar with making his own choices without anyone’s help.
“Chuuya is waiting for me.”