Chapter Text
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke was a coward.
“I apologize but at most, you have a month left.”
Ryuunosuke tuned the doctor’s words out, looking at his hands that were numbly placed on his lap on the sofa he was on. After feeling much worse than usual, he had decided to call over one of the Port Mafia’s private doctors, bracing for the news that he had been expecting all along.
It wasn’t a surprise.
His impending death wasn’t new information.
He knew that he was dying, hell, he was waiting for when all this agony would be over. It was laughable, really, there was once a time where he searched for a reason to live and strictly adhered to it once he found it, but now, he just wanted to rest. His coughs had worsened in the past few months and he could count the amount of times he hadn’t thrown up or coughed out blood every day in the past week on one hand. The back-to-back missions had not helped at all.
“...I shall take my leave now. As usual, I will not inform anyone of this meeting.”
The doctor spoke with a hint of sympathy in his voice but overall, kept it level. Of course, why would he be sympathetic for a mafioso who killed people everyday? In all honesty, Ryuunosuke didn’t need his sympathy, nor the pity that he saw in his eyes before he bowed and took his leave. As much as he’d have liked to slit his throat right then and there for his audacity, it would have been a pain to clean up. Plus, he didn’t know if any other Mafia doctor would keep their mouth shut about their checkups, despite his ego, Ryuunosuke acknowledged that the man who currently personally served him kept his promises.
He was a doctor that a certain ginger executive had pushed the mafioso into hiring after his mentor left the Mafia. Dazai hadn’t allowed him to have any personal doctors, forbidding him from receiving medical treatment after their training sessions unless he was truly on his deathbed. Yet, he felt a sort of freedom and at the same time, emptiness when he could finally have someone to check up on his health. He was directly disobeying his ex-mentor’s words yet oftentimes, he had to remind himself that he despised that guy. His words would not affect him any longer.
In any case, the doctor’s acceptance to keep his mouth shut about the contents of their sessions was a relief.
After all, he couldn’t have Gin know that he was so close to his deathbed
Gin, his little sister, the one person he truly did care about, even if their relationship had become strained after joining the Mafia. It couldn’t be helped, no longer was she the little girl that he wanted to push behind him and protect, she had grown up to be her own person. The least he could do was let her climb out of her cocoon and spread her wings.
She would have to live without him for the majority of her life, after all.
Oftentimes, he felt guilt.
Guilt that he had dragged such a young child into the Mafia, guilt that he couldn’t shield her from this cruel life, guilt that he wasn’t stronger.
Deep down, he knew that inherently, none of this was his fault. Truly, he was just as much as a child as she was, knew only about the darkness that plagued the world and had no reference to know what a better life looked like.
Yet, he didn’t stop blaming himself. It was illogical, he was very well aware, but logic was not something that kept Ryuunosuke standing. His hatred for the world, his rage at the very basis of life itself, his anger towards that man.
Most of all, he detested the way that even after all the things he went through from the hands of that dratted ex-mentor, all the problems he caused, all the misery that clung to him because of that man, even after all of those things, he searched for his approval. It was a hopeless endeavor, part of him wanted to spit in his face at the mere idea of his praise, yet the other part of him, the child that had been beaten down by years of relentless training, hoped for any morsel of attention.
He was weak.
Well, it wouldn’t matter for much longer, he supposed.
An odd sense of calm engulfed him at this thought. After a month, perhaps even sooner, he would be a corpse. A corpse that couldn’t think, a mere body with no thoughts of his own. In truth, he didn’t particularly believe in an afterlife but he guessed that if it did exist, he would be going straight to hell. Sinners like him did not deserve any ounce of relief.
At least, such self-deprecating thoughts would not follow him in his eternal torment.
Once the doctor had left, Ryuunosuke sat for a long while, contemplating his life all the way from when he still resided in the slums, to when he joined the Mafia, and then finally, up to the current moment. The self-reflection was something his past self would have thought as weak, but honestly, in this moment, he couldn’t muster up the strength to, for lack of a better phrase, give a damn. He was going to die anyway.
He was going to die.
He was… Going to be dead.
A bitter chuckle escaped his throat, his legs kicking up onto the sofa before he laid down onto it completely. His left hand went up to brush his hair out of his face and he let it rest on his forehead while more laughs coursed through his body, humorless and without any sort of joy in them. The thought of death, the very thing he had tried to escape all those years back as a mere boy, stalking closer and closer to him without anything he could to stop it… Haaah, truly, it was ironic.
Cruel.
Life was cruel.
Perhaps he could call it karma that he had a lung disease, fating him to die before he even reached his mid twenties, before he even had a chance at life as some people said. He had killed far too many people to delude himself into thinking that he was someone who didn’t deserve such a thing, yet the fact remained that his disease had taken its roots in him due to his residence at the slums as a child. A child that had no awful deeds like he did now. Aside from stealing a couple times out of necessity and the occasional bloodshed when one of the children that he protected was harmed, he held no sins.
It may have been arguable that the things listed above were sins on their own, but who could blame a child that wasn’t even a teen, for trying to survive?
Ryuunosuke acknowledged that this was out of his own bias, a small part of him truly did despise the world for all the unfairness thrown onto him at such a young age, so he never dwelled on these thoughts. It was easier to throw himself into work rather than think about his past, his past did not define him.
And yet it did.
Akutagawa Ryuunosuke was a coward.
And he would never stop being one.
Even in the face of death, he refused to tell his sister about his short time.
When Gin arrived back home, sensing that someone else had been at the apartment the two shared, Ryuunosuke simply brushed her concerns off, saying that it was Higuchi dropping some things off, before returning back to his room. If Gin harbored any suspicion at all towards this, she didn’t show it and Ryuunosuke was infinitely grateful.
Once alone, his mind started whirring again.
He didn’t want to let anyone know about how much time he had left, especially not the Boss and especially not Gin. She would surely try and get more doctors to treat him which would be an annoyance, as well as completely futile. He had been told that his condition was completely unpredictable, no amount of treatment would suffice if his body decided to act up again. In addition to this, he was also told that if he had indeed gotten treatment earlier, perhaps as soon as he joined the Mafia, there would have been a chance at saving him.
Ryuunosuke pushed these thoughts away.
For now, he had to settle his dues.
Quite some time back, when his mentor hadn’t left
him
the Mafia, Ryuunosuke had gotten some advice from someone who he did not appreciate at all at the time.
“Write your woes down. Write your unfinished business down. Write as if your life depends on it. I do not believe that I can write about living humans while also being a part of bloodshed, but in my own personal opinion, this will help you, despite your actions.”
It had been, ironically, a friend of the man Ryuunosuke hated the most and in extension, he hated him. Of course, his hatred was extended by the fact that the approval and attention he seeked so much was given to this very simple looking man, but he digressed. He hadn’t cared about these words back then, even after he was the one, at a brief moment that his mentor was not there, to hesitantly ask how the man seemed to unbothered all the time. His words were something that he thought to be weak back then, thought them to be melodramatics of an old man.
Young Ryuunosuke had despised him for judging his actions, especially because somewhere inside his heart, he knew that whatever he did was not at all morally reprehensible.
The Ryuunosuke who had might as well been on his deathbed, though, understood.
And so, he took out a piece of paper and a pen, vowing to exit this life without any regrets.