Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Day 0:

Breaking News: War Criminal Escapes Confinement

At what is to be believed at around six-thirty this morning, guards of the Japanese National Prison reported a missing inmate during their routine headcounts. Further investigation found that Russian war criminal Fyodor Dostoevsky was no longer in his cell, prompting a lockdown of the entire prison. However, authorities were unable to locate him within the facility and as such a nationwide manhunt has been declared with the police of all provinces keeping an eye out for this very dangerous man.

Dostoevsky, aged thirty-four, is known for his exploits during the Great War three years back between the Allied Forces (Japan, Germany and France) against England caused by the most serious breach of international spyware intelligence in history. Although he hails from Russia, Dostoevsky made himself useful as a hacker and soldier under the command of Agatha Christie, head of the British espionage department OCT (Order of the Clock Tower). During the war, it was discovered that he had violated fundamental rights and engaged in illegal human experimentation while on a military campaign in Japan, leading the Russian government to call for his arrest. Christie, perhaps disgusted with his behaviour, surrendered him willingly; he was then transferred into the hands of the Japanese, who imprisoned him. Two months later, the war ended. 

Civilians are advised to look out for a young, slender man with pale skin, long black hair and purple eyes. If a potential suspect is spotted, call the police immediately and inform them of both your location and situation. Under no circumstances is confrontation advised; the best action to take is to just run away and allow the authorities to handle this criminal.

***

Fukuchi Ouchi hurried down the hall towards the Prime Minister’s office, the reports of the morning clutched in his hand. He had tried to call Natsume earlier as soon as he received the news of Dostoevsky’s escape, but the elderly man had not picked up. It was surprising, for he was normally up, awake and working before even sunrise. 

Well, no matter. Perhaps he had merely forgotten to turn his phone off silent; or, knowing the absent-minded nature of the man, he had left the device sandwiched between stacks of papers where its ringing could not reach his ears. 

He stopped in front of the office, nodding respectfully at the guards stationed outside before he lifted his knuckles to rap sharply on the door. 

“Natsume-san?” he called. “I have news. It’s about Dostoevsky.”

There was no response. He tried again. “Natsume-san? Prime Minister?”

“He might not be in,” one of the guards told him helpfully. “I was here before dawn and no one has entered since.”

Fukuchi spared him a tight smile. “The Prime Minister has a bad habit of sleeping in his office, so that’s nothing unusual. May I enter and check on him?”

The guard shrugged and gestured with one white-gloved hand. “Be my guest.”

Fukuchi made a mental note to scold him later about being more cautious of letting just anyone get close to the Prime Minister, even if that person was the head of the Department of Special Intelligence. But he digressed. 

The ornate oak doors made barely a sound as he pushed them open, creating a gap just wide enough for him to slip through. Blinking his eyes against the darkness, Fukuchi frowned. Natsume Soseki was an odd man, but keeping his personal workspace shrouded in shadow was not one of his quirky preferences. 

He fumbled around for the light switch and flipped it up, bathing the room in fluorescence. 

“Prime Minister,” he said, turning around, “you should not work in darkness. It’s bad for your eyes.”

The sight of an empty office chair greeted him, cushions of leather smooth from a night of not being sat upon. He felt his eyes narrow in confusion as he walked closer to the glaringly person-less desk. “Prime Minister?”

Without any further ado he reached for his phone again, punching in the first contact. The device rang into the silence, once, twice, thrice, before eventually going to voicemail. 

“Hey,” said the automatic tone in the voice of Natsume Soseki, “you’ve reached the voicemail of the Prime Minister! Congratulations are in order, I suppose; not many people can get to this stage in life, after all. Please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as I feasibly can.”

Fukuchi waited for the annoying words to stop and for the beep that signified a recording to start. “Natsume-san, where are you? With all due respect, it is already eight in the morning and you are expected to be here. There is urgent news that we must deal with about the escape of Fyodor Dostoevsky.”

He paused, unsure of what else to say but feeling eerily as if he had forgotten something. Eventually, frustrated by the words that did not come, he saved the voicemail and just hung up. 

He stalked out of the office and headed straight down the stairs, tapping in numbers on his phone as he did so. 

Fukuzawa Yukichi, one of his oldest friends, picked up on the second ring.

“Hello Ouchi, how are you?” the man asked. 

“Is Natsume-san with you?” Fukuchi questioned immediately, without bothering about the warm greetings they would normally exchange. 

“No, he’s not. Is something wrong?”

“I’m not sure yet. But he’s not in his office at a precarious time like this, with Dostoevsky’s escape and everything, and plus he’s ignoring my calls. You know it’s quite out of character for him to do that.”

Yukichi hummed in agreement. “True, but let us not panic yet. He most likely has a legitimate reason for being absent. Give it some time.”

“And how long before this indeed becomes a need to panic?”

“A few more hours, perhaps. Then we shall see. Have faith, I’m sure things will be resolved soon enough.”

Fukichi breathed in, trying to dislodge the feeling of discontent that had settled in his stomach. “Right. Could you look for him and update me if you find anything?”

“Of course, old friend,” Fukuchii said soothingly, no doubt sensing the unrest that had creeped into his voice. “You can rely on me.”

“I know,” Fukichi said, and then hung up.

As much as he would like to believe his friend and trust in the intentions of his Prime Minister and former mentor, he could not shake the fear beginning to fester in his chest. Natsume was frenetically fickle, yes, but he had always behaved with the best interest of Japan at heart. And he must know disappearing without a word would not be in anyone’s best interest. 

Pursing his lips, Fukuchi sank down onto the couch in his own office and decided that he ought to make a few more calls. 

***

Day 1 - 21st May, 2021:

The sword was a welcome weight in Chuuya’s hands, the blade flashing in the light of the training center. 

“Be careful, Chuuya,” the instructor said, placing warm hands upon his where he gripped the hilt of the blade. “I know you’re one of our most skilled martial artists, but everyone makes mistakes.”

He nodded, offering her a soft smile. “Of course, sensei.”

Then he strode onto the tatami mats and inhaled deeply, allowing air to flow into his lungs before he positioned the sword out in front of him and ran through motions that were more like instinct to him. Even as he felt sweat drip down his back from the strain, the soothing, repetitive actions lifted an unseen weight off his shoulders. With the pressure of school bearing down upon him daily, he’d forgotten how good it felt to do something so familiar. 

He stopped when he heard his name called, sheathing the sword carefully and turning around. 

“Oh Shirase,” he said cheerfully, walking up to the other boy. “What are you doing here?”

“The real question is what are you doing here? There’s about half-an-hour until class, so you should already be changed by now.”

Chuuya pursed his lips; in his state of concentration, he’d completely forgotten about the time. 

“You’re right,” he said, placing the sword back onto the shelf and following Shirase out of the building. “Thank you for coming to get me. I would have completely forgotten otherwise.”

“It’s no problem,” Shirase said cheekily. “If you’d been late, who could have helped me with my physics homework? But now that you’re here, I don’t need to worry anymore.”

Laughing, Chuuya slapped him on the back. “One of these days, you’ll need to figure out how to do it by yourself.”

“That can wait until it becomes a life or death situation,” his friend said. “That’s the only time when I’ll feel any motivation to understanding whatever the fuck differentiation is.”

“You'll regret that in a year’s time when the college exams are on,” Chuuya warned. 

“Key word: a year’s time. Until then… Well, I intend to be as carefree as possible until I can’t anymore.”

“There’s probably some wisdom in that,” he admitted, flicking hair out of his face as they returned to the dorms of Yokohama International School. “I honestly wish that could be my life policy.”

“You go here on a scholarship, my genius friend. There’s no way that could ever be your life policy. But me… Straight C’s, dumb and lazy Shirase—”

“Don’t describe yourself like that,” Chuuya snapped, cutting him off. 

“Ah, but you assume I have a problem with being described like that,” Shirase countered with a smile. “Trust me, I don’t care at all. People like me are the ones who’ll be having the most fun anyway, while geniuses like you rot in your bedrooms hunched over equations and formulas that you’ll never end up using.”

He let out a yelp as Chuuya shoved him playfully into the wall. “Ouch! You’re stronger than you look.”

“You literally just saw me practicing with a sword,” Chuuya said, unimpressed. “How could you expect anything less?”

“I suppose so,” Shirase muttered as they walked up the stairs and approached Chuuya’s shared dormitory. Shirase made to twist the doorknob, but then abruptly jerked his hand away. 

“Are you okay?”

“You do it,” the other boy said, a nervous edge coming into his voice. “Judging by these shoes, it looks like the Demon Prodigy’s in.”

“Who’s the— oh, you mean shitty Dazai?” Chuuya wrinkled his nose. “I don’t understand why you guys all call him that. It’s much too cool of a nickname for someone as annoying as him.”

“Because he’s a Demon,” Shirase emphasised. “He’s always wrapped in bandages like he’s hiding runes or some shit—”

“—he wears those because he’s got sensitive skin; do you think you’ve been reading too much—”

“—he’s always whispering about suicide—”

“—are you really surprised? He specialises in humanities—”

“—and he never talks to anyone, except for you I guess.”

“Very much against my will,” Chuuya hissed. 

“And he’s a prodigy,” Shirase continued, “because he answers more questions than even you—”

“—untrue, that’s—”

“—since his transfer here at the start of the year, his average mark in pop quizzes is higher than yours—”

“—who the fuck told you that—”

“—and for the first time literally ever, his name is ahead of yours in the bets to who’s going to place first in midterms.”

That gave Chuuya pause. “What?!”

“So yeah, now you can see why everyone calls him the Demon Prodigy right?” Shirase said, ignoring Chuuya’s outburst. 

“Hold up, can we go back to how people think he’ll score higher than me in midterms? Because that’s just ridiculous, it would never happen; I’d rather—”

The door behind them swung open and they both whirled around in surprise, Shirase letting out an embarrassing squeak and ducking behind Chuuya as Dazai Osamu spared both of them an amused look. 

“Why hello Chuuya and Chuuya’s friend,” he said cheerfully. “What are you two doing standing out here, gossiping like old wives?”

“We are not,” Chuuya spat, storming past him and into the room. “Shirase, I’ll meet you in class, okay? I need to change and pack my books.”

“Sure,” the boy said and then promptly left as fast as he could. Dazai flashed his retreating silhouette a look of unrestrained derision, before following Chuuya and slamming the door shut behind him. 

“Why do you always look at him like that?” Chuuya asked, watching with some curiosity as the faux debonair slid off Dazai like a cloak. 

“Like what?”

“Like you want to peel the flesh off his bones.”

“Chuuya should stop worrying about that and start worrying about how I’m on track to rank first in midterms,” Dazai said cheekily. 

“Fuck you,” Chuuya retorted, tearing off his gym shirt to slip his arms into his school blouse. Dazai averted his eyes to the naked flesh, as he always did; Chuuya was never sure why he was so particular about that, but it was one of those topics that they had silently and mutually agreed not to question each other on. 

“You should wash your hair,” Dazai remarked. “It probably stinks from how long you were in that gym for.”

“There’s not enough time for that and you know it.” He did up his tie skillfully and started throwing things haphazardly into his school bag, keeping one eye on Dazai as the other boy sank onto his bed on the right side of the dormitory. 

“For someone who’s here on a scholarship, you sure are disorganised,” he said mildly. 

Chuuya whipped around, throwing a pen at him which Dazai easily ducked. “How the hell do you know that?”

“Should I not?” Dazai asked, looking genuinely surprised. “It’s one of the first things I heard when I transferred him; that’s Nakahara Chuuya, with the red hair and blue eyes. He was raised in France and goes to this school on a scholarship. Hey chibi, it’s been weeks since I first arrived but I’ve never heard you speak French!”

“Ferme ta gueule, espèce de maquereau visqueux,” he said, mostly just to shut him up.

“What does that mean?” the other boy said excitedly. “What does that mean?”

“It means ‘shut the fuck up, you slimy mackerel’. Come on, we have to leave.”

Dazai stretched, groaning loudly, but acquiesced, dragging his feet as the two of them made their way to class. They were one of the last few to slip in. Chuuya took his usual seat near the front between Shirase and Yuan, while Dazai plopped down in the one directly behind him where it was easy to blow spitballs into Chuuya’s hair and nudge him constantly with his foot. 

“Do you want me to take a look at that homework now, before the teacher comes?” Chuuya offered Shirase. 

“Oh, thank you so much!” he replied, pulling the required papers out of his bag. I’ve been really struggling with this question, I was wondering if you could help?”

Chuuya examined it carefully, before nodding. “See, you made a mistake here with the rate of acceleration. You should’ve used the chain rule instead of expanding out the function, it’s easy to make mistakes by doing that.”

“Okay, sorry, can you just do it for me?” Shirase pleaded. “I really have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“The chain rule, silly!” Dazai piped up from behind them, leaning his chin on his hands as he stared Shirase down. “We learnt this not so long back. Even your useless brain should not have forgotten so quickly.”

“Stop insulting my friends, Mackerel,” Chuuya threatened, reaching over to smack Dazai sharply on the head.

“Oh Slug, you wound me,” Dazai said dramatically, slumping into a fainting position. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, turning back to Shirase. “It’s okay, physics and the calculus that comes with it is pretty difficult to understand. I’ll show you how to do this question, but you should try to do the rest by yourself.”

“But Chuuya, you’re the genius here,” Shirase whined, pouting unashamedly and staring up at him with wide eyes.

“Fine,” Chuuya said and reached for the stack of papers. “You better hope I get all this done before it's time for math class.”

“You are so generous!” his friend shouted, throwing his arms around Chuuya while he wriggled uncomfortably in their bony embrace. 

“Much too generous,” Dazai complained. “Make him do his own work. He’s rich, yes, but all the money in the world isn’t going to let him bring you along like the dog you are when it's time for his university entrance tests.”

“Don’t call me a dog,” Chuuya seethed, his pen working furiously through the questions as he tried to ignore the sharp kicks Dazai routinely sent his way. 

“But chibi, that’s what you are! Running around, doing errands for those two like a dog.”

If he had continued on then perhaps Chuuya would’ve hit him, but fortune was on Dazai’s side today since the teacher entered right as Chuuya began to draw back his fist. He dropped it instantly, to Dazai’s unrepentant snickers, and stood up with the rest of the class to greet their teacher. 

***

Dazai got to his feet as the bell for recess rang and hurried out of the classroom, heading almost instinctively for the secluded bathroom stationed on the roof of their school’s building for second-years like Chuuya and himself. 

It was a single unisex cubicle tucked away at the far right corner of the rectangular rooftop, hidden by the long plants someone had decided to place up there. He made sure it was unoccupied first before pushing the door open and stumbling inside, placing his palms flat against the sink as he stared at his own reflection in the mirror. 

He inhaled deeply, then exhaled again. 

It was ridiculous, this feeling of paralysis that was slowly but surely spreading over his body. The math content today had been difficult but not undoable; with a few more sleepless nights, he was certain to grasp it sooner or later. And yet the numbers, which he recalled had blurred in front of his eyes in a way numbers didn’t usually do, swirled around his brain like malevolent spirits, haunting his next steps. 

Perhaps he should set aside his pride and ask Chuuya for help, since the other boy seemed to perfectly understand what was going on. 

But wouldn’t that make him just like Chuuya’s friends, who in his mind were more similar to leeches than people? They fed off Chuuya’s brilliance like starving paupers, draining his energy and confining his intelligence to equations that he could already solve, could probably have solved even as just a toddler. 

Breathe, he reminded himself, taking a shuddering, half-painful breath. It’s just one math lesson. You need to calm down. It’s natural not to understand anything at first. 

“Yo, Demon,” someone called from outside, pounding their fists against the locked door. “You in there? Open up!”

Dazai flinched, knowing there was only one person this could be. If he had been a luckier man then perhaps it would’ve been Chuuya; but given his general misfortune, it was undoubtedly Tamazaki, the school’s resident dickhead. 

The door shook once more with the force of the older boy’s fists, and Dazai sighed and relented. He would need to find a new hiding spot. 

“Ah, there you are,” Tamazaki sneered, hooking a finger around his collar to drag him outside. 

“I would say the same but that would make it sound as if I’m looking for you,” Dazai said, plastering a large, shit-eating grin all over his face. “And, as you probably know by now, no one would ever choose to look for a rotten asshole like you.”

Tamazaki growled under his breath and threw him onto the floor, Dazai wincing but refusing to make a sound as the bare concrete met his flesh. 

“Aren’t you bored of this by now?” he taunted, staggering to his feet. “Not very manly of you to continue coming after someone a year younger. Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”

“Shut your mouth, Demon,” Tamazaki hissed, grabbing Dazai’s shirt and hoisting him up so that they were almost nose-to-nose. “What did you say to my girlfriend that made her break up with me?”

“Nothing,” he said truthfully. Most likely that the girl had decided she could do better but was too terrified to admit her true reasons to Tamazaki’s face, so she’d decided to blame the new and weird transfer student that was nicknamed a Demon. 

Tamazaki flung him against the railing and he teetered precariously against the edge, able to glance down and see the bustling of the street below them. A vicious kick to his ribs sent shocks of pain vibrating down his body as Tamazaki knelt down so that they were at eye level. 

“Tell me the truth,” the boy hissed. “You had to have done something .”

“I did nothing.” Dazai examined his bleeding fingers with an ease he didn’t feel. “Just accept that you’re not the desirable womaniser you think you are.”

His jaw jerked to the side as Tamazaki backhanded him across the cheek savagely, the bandages wrapping half of his face doing nothing to absorb the impact (not that he’d thought they would, of course; that was not the reason why he wore them). 

“I hate people like you,” Tamazaki seethed, wiping his hand on his pants. “So smart, thinking you know everything, lurking in the corners and meddling in other people’s affairs.”

“If that’s who you dislike, you should go after Chuuya! He fits that bill perfectly!” Dazai said helpfully.

“Chuuya? Nakahara Chuuya? Fuck no! Do you think I have a death wish? He’d kill me.”

“I hope he does,” Dazai muttered, and earned a punch to his shoulder for that comment. “I hope you both kill each other. Slugs like the two of you don’t deserve to live.”

“Don’t insult Nakahara-kun!” Tamazaki roared, and Dazai curled himself into a ball and tried to think about literally anything else except for the blows raining down upon him. 

Eventually, Tamazaki got bored and left, and Dazai was alone once more. He tried to push himself to his feet but found that his strength had deserted him, leaving his limbs weak and useless. He watched as the sky above clouded over and the first drops of water hit his face, and he wondered if suicide by pneumonia was a peaceful way to go.

***

Chuuya was out on the indoor basketball courts, dominating the rest of the competition (per usual) when the sirens began to ring. The students immediately started to scream, scrambling to get away from whatever threat was approaching. 

“Warning,” the automatic voice intoned. “An intruder has appeared on campus. Please go to your classrooms and await further instructions.”

There was a hot spike of panic in Chuuya’s chest but he pushed it down, allowing one of the teachers to herd him away from the court and back into the school. An intruder? What did this mean?

“Hey, Chuuya! Chuuya wait up!” Yuan shouted, running to attach herself to his arm. “What’s going on?”

“An intruder, apparently,” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “We’re going to return to our classrooms. Have you seen Shirase?”

“Right here,” the grey-haired boy said as he squeezed his way to Chuuya’s unoccupied side. He let out a sigh of relief. 

“Shirase, Yuan, Chuuya, there you are,” their homeroom teacher, Myazawa Ara, said as they made their way to their seats. “Is everyone here?”

Chuuya scanned the rows of their classmates, catching sight of their terrified expressions. His chin dipped in a nod, yes they’re all here, before he noticed an empty desk. 

Dazai? he had a moment to wonder, before his thoughts were cut off by the sound of the alarms. 

“Students, please make your way to your classrooms immediately .” The announcement being made was no longer in the voice of a robot, but instead that of the principal being broadcasted live to the school. “This is a situation of the utmost severity. Teachers, please barricade your classrooms and check your phones for more information.”

Right on cue, Myazawa-sensei’s phone buzzed with an alert and Chuuya glanced down at it before she had the chance to shield it from him. The only thing he saw was a name, and yet his spine stiffened with fear. 

Fyodor Dostoevsky.

He had read an article just yesterday of the man’s escape from prison a week ago. Why was his name being sent to the teacher? Surely that could only mean…

“Hey!” he shouted, pushing the information to the back of his mind and deciding to focus on the problem at present; namely, the mackerel’s worrying absence. “Have any of you guys seen Dazai? He’s not here right now.”

“I think I saw him going onto the roof,” one of the girls said. 

Hot panic seized Chuuya’s lungs. You could not hear announcements on the roof. 

Immediately, as was often the case with him, he was moving before his brain had a moment to catch up. Yuan tried to pull him back but he shook her off easily, ignoring the cries to halt from his teacher as he ran down the corridor and bolted up the stairs that led to the roof. 

He pushed open the rusty door and was promptly assaulted by bucketfuls of pouring rain. The roof was not a place he went to often, so he carefully took note of his surroundings. It was a flat rectangle of cement, with what appeared to be a bathroom tucked in one corner, benches in the other, and the center taken up by a large maintenance office. 

“Dazai?” he yelled into the storm. “Shitty Dazai, where are you?”

“Here,” a weak voice came off to his right. Chuuya squinted, shielding his eyes from the droplets, and saw a small lump laying motionless close to the bathroom. 

Hurrying over, he dropped down beside Dazai’s prone form. 

“What the fuck?” he said, unable to keep the anger out of his voice as he regarded the bruises scattered all over Dazai’s face and the way he was cradling bloody hands to his chest. “What happened? Who the hell managed to kill you before you did?”

“Get me out of this rain first,” Dazai whined petulantly. “I’ve decided that death by pneumonia is deeply unpleasant after all.”

Chuuya wanted to press Dazai for more answers, but he had to admit the other boy was right. At this rate he would catch an awful fever, and then he’d have to deal with the Mackerel’s sniffling in their shared dorm for weeks. 

“Alright,” he said, hooking one arm under Dazai’s legs and bringing the other to support his back as he lugged both of them underneath the thankfully large awnings lining the maintenance shed. The dim light hanging on the wall lit up Dazai’s pallid features, Chuuya stopping to carefully put him down and lean him against the wall. 

“Ouch,” Dazai said, his light tone not matching the pain that shone clearly in his eyes. 

“So tell me, who do I need to beat up?” Chuuya said, placing both hands on Dazai’s shoulders. 

“Oh I didn’t know Chuuya was that protective over me!” Dazai crowed. 

“Shut up, I’m not. But I hate people who are excessively violent without a reason.”

“A reason? How do you even know there wasn’t a reason?” the other boy said sharply. “Maybe I did something to deserve all this.” He gestured vaguely to himself. 

“Y’know, Mackerel, I do think you’re the bane of my existence most of the time,” Chuuya said conversationally as he sat down beside Dazai, an arm-length away. “We’ve spent literally every waking moment with each other since you transferred here at the start of the year. We take the same classes, we live in the same dorm, they put us on the same teams during academic competitions because of our brains and sports competitions because my talents will balance out your lack thereof. So I know what you’re likely and unlikely to do, and I can tell that you’d never antagonise someone who could hurt you this much. Unless they came to you first, in which case your stupid mouth will be the death of you.”

The ghost of a smile flitted over Dazai’s face. “You’re smarter than you look.”

Chuuya almost smiled back, but then he stilled. The surprise of finding Dazai beaten up had caused him to nearly forget the real purpose as to why he came up here. 

“You probably didn’t hear, but there’s an intruder in our school,” he said abruptly. 

Dazai took a moment to process. “What?”

“An intruder. A person who goes into some place unannounced,” Chuuya enunciated.

“Yes, I know what an intruder is,” Dazai said, waving him off. 

“Based on what I saw on Myazawa-sensei’s phone, it might be… Fyodor Dostoevsky,” Chuuya explained, hardly daring to say the name out loud.

“The war criminal?” Dazai yelped. 

Chuuya slapped a hand over his mouth and made a shushing gesture. “Not so loud. I don’t think anyone can hear us over the storm, but it’s best to be careful. We shouldn’t go back to the classroom, because what if he’s prowling around there? We should stay up here until this whole thing blows over.”

“I agree,” Dazai said. “Or at least we need to wait until we can see the police arrive.”

“For once, you’re concerned about your own life,” Chuuya remarked, almost teasingly. “I’d thought, given how badly you want to die, that you would have dashed straight down there the moment you heard a criminal was in the building.”

Scoffing, Dazai shot him a look of incredulity. “Two months of being roommates and Chuuya still hasn’t learnt that I don’t want a painful death? Dostoevsky-san would probably slice me open for his experiments while keeping me alive.”

“You’re already sliced open,” Chuuya said, scooting closer as Dazai looked away. 

“I’m fine,” he mumbled. 

Chuuya touched two fingers to Dazai’s swollen and bleeding face. “You’re not. I wish I had tissues or something, I’m sorry—”

“Why are you apologising, chibi?” Dazai asked blankly. “Did you punch me?”

“No, it’s just— oh fuck, I can’t deal with this,” he huffed, taking off his blazer and draping it around Dazai. “Here, you’ve been marinating in this rain like the slug you are for much longer than I have. At this rate, the chill’s going to kill you before Dostoevsky ever gets his chance.”

“You’re awfully composed right now,” Dazai observed. “Given that it’s you, I would’ve expected perhaps a bit more rage and panic.”

A scowl wrought its way onto his lips. “I don’t always just think with my muscles, dumbass. You know just as well as I do that it would be suicide to panic in a situation like this.”

Dazai hummed. “You’re right. But did you say suicide? Do you really think panicking now will secure me a sweet death?”

“It was a figure of speech,” Chuuya ground out. “You should’ve known that since you spend half your time buried in books.”

“Books are much nicer than people,” Dazai yawned, dropping his head against Chuuya’s shoulder. The sudden weight was startling and he had half a mind to shove the other boy off, but eventually decided against it. Dazai’s entire frame was drooping with exhaustion yet he was simultaneously tense from pain. Chuuya still disliked him, he probably would forever, but not so much that he would begrudge him this little bit of comfort. 

***

Shirase watched Chuuya leave with a mixture of confusion and trepidation. He couldn’t fathom why the other boy would chase after someone he’d voraciously complained about multiple times, while at the same time leaving his real friends behind. 

“Shirase?” Yuan whimpered, tugging at his sleeve. “What are we going to do?”

“Both of you will be staying here, of course,” Myazawa-sensei spoke up sternly, having evidently overheard their conversation. “You will not dare follow Nakahara-kun out there.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” Shirase muttered, leading Yuan to a chair next to him and settling her down. 

“Good,” the teacher said. She tilted her head up to look out the window with a forlorn gaze. “Those two are on their own now. I have to protect the rest of you.”

Motionless, Shirase spectated the teacher with some admiration as she dragged desks, chairs and even a bookcase against the door, while lowering the curtains to all the windows. 

“Stand in the far corner, where I can see you,” she ordered. Shirase and the rest of his classmates filed there instantly, standing with their backs to the wall as they watched their teacher pile more objects before the door. 

Suddenly, he heard one of his classmates cry out in surprise. The vent above their heads had dropped open of its own accord; but what had caused the shriek was the thing that had come crawling out of it. A bug, of sorts, that resembled a millipede with possibly twice as many legs. 

The students yelped and scrambled away. 

“Quick, someone kill it!” Shirase said. “I don’t want to have to wait out a lockdown with a worm!”

“You kill it!” someone snapped. 

“Hell no, do I look like a brave bug-killer to you? I can’t even look my mother in the eye most of the time,” he retorted to a smattering of chuckles. 

“I’ll do it,” a girl named Akira said, stepping forward with her foot raised menacingly. 

Just as she was about to bring her shoe down upon the bug, it unexpectedly ran towards her with astonishing speed. The girl screamed in horror as it crawled up her leg and bit into soft skin, before disappearing into flesh. 

“What the fuck!” Yuan screeched as Akira began yelling loudly and clawing at the spot where the worm had vanished. 

“Be quiet!” Myazawa-sensei demanded, hurrying over. She dropped to her knees and examined the girl, who had now collapsed in a heap upon the floor, probably due to fright. “We’ll take you to a doctor as soon as this ordeal is over.”

“I can feel it within me,” Akira gasped, her eyes bloodshot and bulging. “It’s— please, someone get it out!”

With an audible crack her back arched upwards as crimson veins began crawling up her face. A moment later her skin turned ashen grey, blood from an unknown source dripping down the corner of her mouth. She stared up at her horror-struck classmates with glassy, unseeing eyes, and bared her fangs. 

Then, she sprinted towards them. 

Shirase let out a shriek of alarm and dragged Yuan backwards with him as Akira sank her teeth into the nearest classmate, Sato, pressing in so deep that even from a distance he could see blood begin to well up.

“What the fuck!” Sato shouted, wrenching himself from her grip. Shirase had just seconds to process the way his friend’s skin began to split and the red staining his teeth, before Akira lunged for Myazawa-sensei. 

“Oh no, no, no,” he said, stepping backwards. While he was by no means the smartest in his class, it only took a person of average intellect to decipher what was occurring at this very moment; if you were at all connected with pop culture, you would realise what this was. 

Zombies. 

He must’ve said as much out loud because the rest of his classmates turned to face him, their expressions ranging from confused to terrified. One of them opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t get a chance. 

Sato rose from where he had been lying on the floor, clutching his wound, and immediately turned to attack someone else. The classroom dissolved into panic after that. 

The whole mess was a blur. All he knew was that his grip had tightened on Yuan’s wrist, and that adrenaline had lent him some sort of superhuman strength that allowed him to push aside the desks and chairs blockading the door while Akira, Sato and Myazawa-sensei turned their sights to the rest of his classmates. As soon as the hallway came into sight he barrelled towards it, dragging Yuan behind him as all thoughts in his mind turned to getting out as quickly as possible. 

For a brief moment he considered trying to warn Chuuya, but dismissed the notion as soon as he thought of it. This was a zombie apocalypse. He would be lucky if he could even save himself. 

And besides, if anyone could survive this, it would be the occasionally-katana-wielding Chuuya and his demonic prodigy boyfriend.

The same could definitely not be said for himself and Yuan; so best that they run as quickly as their legs could carry them. 

Chapter Text

Dazai jolted awake when his head slipped off Chuuya’s shoulder. 

“How long was I asleep for?” he croaked, wincing at the stiff aching all over his body. Time and rain rotted the bruises and cuts the same way a flood drowns flowers, until every twitch of movement was excruciating. He decided to ignore it.

“Longer than I’ve ever seen you sleep,” Chuuya said, his eyes gazing upwards at the ash-grey firmament. “I think we’ve been here for an hour, maybe?”

An hour. It was not so long in the grand scheme of things. “Do you think it’s safe to return?”

“Who knows,” the other boy said. He flicked crimson hair out of his eyes and cracked his neck. “We haven’t heard any screaming, so maybe.”

It was a poor attempt at a joke and Dazai said as much, watching with some amusement when Chuuya snapped back defensively. They traded verbal blows for a moment, the interaction so familiar that he was almost able to forget their current situation; but nothing lasts forever and the mirage was shattered when they heard a thump against the roof-door. 

They jerked back at the same time. Dazai grabbed a misplaced broom that was leaning against the wall and passed it to Chuuya, who sprang into a defensive stance and started to wield it like a weapon. 

“It could be Shirase,” Chuuya said uncertainly. “Maybe he’s coming up to tell us that it’s all okay.”

A silent raising of Dazai’s eyebrow was enough to convey his skepticism, as Chuuya let out an aggravated sigh. Neither of them had much belief in luck, nor had they ever considered themselves lucky people. 

The door burst open with a metallic whine. It revealed a silhouette rushing towards them, the dim light cast down by the storm not enough to illuminate the newcomer’s features. 

“Hey!” Chuuya called. “Stop running! Who are you?”

Squinting, Dazai looked upon the figure and spotted bloody teeth and greying skin. He let himself feel confused for a singular moment, before locking his grip around the back of Chuuya’s shirt and pulling him out and into the rain as the crazed girl ripped through the space where they had just been standing. 

She turned back, snarling, before plunging towards them yet again.

This time Chuuya reacted faster. Before Dazai even had time to breathe he had shoved the narrow end of the broomstick at the girl’s chest viciously, forcing her back and away from them as he shouted unanswered questions. 

Whatever beast had possessed the girl gave her increased strength than what ought be expected for her slight frame; but even so, she was no match for Chuuya who was famed throughout the school for his proficiency in martial arts and sports generally. 

“Dazai! What should we do?” Chuuya asked, whipping his head back. 

He was standing near the edge of the roof, water sliding down his face and plastering his shirt to his skin. Dazai averted his gaze.

“Push her off,” he said. 

Chuuya blinked. “We can’t do that. She'll die.”

Oh Chuuya, he thought. As if it could ever be that simple. 

“It’s kill or be killed, chibi.” He ducked back under the awning. “Besides, something tells me that even a fall from this height won’t be enough to sever her heartbeat. Shame, really. But maybe this means she could tell me what death by falling feels like.”

Flipping the broomstick in his hands, Chuuya lodged it against the girl’s chest as he shoved her to the ground. “I’m not killing her! Who do you think I am?”

He continued on before Dazai had the opportunity to respond. “Not a fucking murderer, that’s who! There has to be another way to do this.”

The bricks that built up the maintenance room were infected with mold. How very strange; he didn’t know that was possible. 

“Use your eyes. She’s not human anymore,” he said curtly, looking back just in time to catch Chuuya flinch violently. 

How very strange indeed. 

“Still, that doesn’t—”

The girl got tired of their talking. That much was evident as she brought her legs up to kick at Chuuya’s stomach, the heel of her shoe connecting solidly with flesh. Chuuya tumbled off, grasping at the hurt area and inhaled laboriously. 

“Chuuya, move!” Dazai found himself yelling as the girl made to attack him again. He watched with bated breath as the other boy ducked to the side, swinging the mop he was still clutching in one hand not unlike a baseball bat, straight into the torso of the girl. She flew back like a cartoon character, a tangle of limbs slipping on the rain-wet railing. 

For a heartstopping moment she teetered there precariously, before Chuuya snapped out of whatever daze he was in and shoved her over with a kind of bloodthirst Dazai always knew he had in him. 

But the malice was gone in an instant as Chuuya stared down at his own hands with horror, disbelieving of the crime he had deluded himself into thinking he committed. 

Meanwhile, Dazai leaned over the railing to watch the girl fall. Moments later, Chuuya joined him. 

“See,” he said as the girl hit the ground with a sickening crunch and then promptly got back up. “I told you she wouldn’t die.” 

It wasn’t your fault, he didn’t say. You had no other choice.

“Liar,” Chuuya muttered. “I couldn’t feel her breath when she attacked me. She’s already dead.”

Real shock flickered through his veins, a dying lightbulb that was rarely used for he was so rarely shocked. “What?”

“Don’t play dumb. You must’ve also figured it out by now. That was just a simple confirmation of what we both already knew.”

He furrowed his eyebrows, thinking upon it, but then smiled as he understood Chuuya’s meaning. “Should we say it at the same time?”

Chuuya scoffed, “Wouldn’t that be childish? We can just say it outright.”

“Zombies,” they said in unison. 

To be truthful, that wasn’t Dazai’s first hypothesis. He had merely thought the girl was under some kind of drug-induced haze which was causing her erratic behaviour; and besides, Chuuya’s unconscious flair for the dramatic wouldn’t change the fact that they were not so high up that death would be instant if they fell. Plus even if they did, the said drug-induced-haze would keep them from feeling pain. 

Zombies, however…

Yes, given the new information, he supposed that made some sense as well. 

“A zombie apocalypse,” he mused as he walked over and carefully shut the roof-door. “Chuuya, pass me the broom.”

The redhead obeyed wordlessly, and Dazai shoved it under the handle. “There, that should keep any more of them out for the moment.”

“Shouldn’t we try and get out of here?” Chuuya asked as they hurried back to the awning and took a seat under it.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Haven’t you watched any apocalypse movies? The roof is always the best place to be. The people who are the most likely to survive hang out on the roof.”

He paused. “I can’t believe I just said that. Chuuya, let’s go with your plan. It’s suicide to go down there!”

“Bastard,” the other boy said, pushing him back down as he tried to stand up. “You are not dying here.”

“Why not?” he asked, frowning. “It’s peaceful enough. And probably less painful than slitting my wrists or drowning.”

Chuuya exhaled, an angry and exasperated sound. “What’s so bad about living that makes you want to die all the time? I think life’s rather nice, actually.”

“Well, I’ve always said that Slug is stupid.” Dazai shrugged at Chuuya’s indignant sputters. “People like us are born to die, chibi. There’s no point in neither denying it nor delaying it.”

Tilting his head, Chuuya regarded him with unreadable eyes. “What do you mean by ‘people like us’?”

“Haven’t you ever felt,” he said cautiously, “as if you did not fit right in this world?”

Inexplicably, or perhaps predictably, the other boy tensed. “Forget I asked.”

The burning sensation in his chest was an ersatz of relief. “Sure.”

Chuuya let out an obscenely loud sigh and slid to the ground, pillowing his head on his hands. “What do we do now?”

“Do you have a phone on you? That way we might be able to contact the police. I left mine in the classroom.”

Rummaging around in his pockets, Chuuya produced a small black device from deep within the fabric. A tap of his finger lit up the screen; it was a miracle that even after the copious amounts of rain that it could still function. 

“Here,” he said, tossing it casually to Dazai. “You do it. I’m completely spent. Password’s 654321.”

“That’s a dumb password,” Dazai muttered. “And I don’t even need it to call emergency services. You just gave me full access to your phone, idiot.”

“So?” Chuuya closed his eyes. 

“So… I could take this opportunity to send out every embarrassing photo you have on here to the whole school.”

“Just shut up and call the police, Mackerel.”

Dazai let out a petty huff and dialled in the numbers. They listened carefully as the phone rang and rang and rang, but no one ever picked up. 

Eventually, Chuuya got sick of the irritating noise and pressed the little red button. 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dazai said matter-of-factly. “Now, if we call them again, there’s even less chance of them picking up.”

“Don’t act as if there was ever any chance in the first place,” Chuuya groaned. 

“That kind of pessimism is annoyingly reminiscent of my own.” He flicked the redhead on the forehead. “Stop acting like me. It’s creepy.”

“Didn’t I tell you before to shut up?”

“I don’t listen to silly dogs like you,” said Dazai as he rang the police again to no response. Irritated, he passed the phone back to Chuuya and noticed his fingers trembling in action; from cold or exhaustion or something else, he didn’t know. 

Annoyingly, Chuuya noticed as well. “We should find a better place to shelter. Water’s getting in here.”

Nodding, Dazai stood up and gestured to their only two options. “Storage room, or bathroom? Only one’s unlocked.”

“Ugh, I’ll rather die before being cooped up in as small of a place as that toilet with you. Let’s try to open the storage room.”

“Sure,” he said, shrugging. The two of them walked around until they found the doors, which were secured with a lock that probably only the janitor had the key to. Chuuya jogged backwards and then rushed towards it with a loud war cry, striking the metal with the tip of his shoe. It clanged against the door jarringly, but otherwise did nothing. 

Dazai, meanwhile, fell to the ground in a heap of helpless laughter, watching with unbridled glee as a flush of embarrassment crept up Chuuya’s face. 

“Shut up, asshole,” the other boy muttered, ducking away. “Let’s see you try.”

“Alright; hand me your badges, and I’ll show you.”

Grimacing, Chuuya put one hand over the shining pins on his blazer almost protectively. “What do you plan to do with them?”

“Open the door, of course! Chibi, this really isn’t the time to be sentimental. Hand them over. I only need two, so you’ll have a bunch left anyway.”

Chuuya sighed. “I’ll pick my two least favourite.” He plucked them off and threw them to Dazai. “Catch.”

He let them drop to the ground before picking one up and raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t know you were the captain of the tennis club.”

“I just filled in for a couple of weeks while the real one was out injured. It was way back in elementary school, hardly important. I don’t even play tennis anymore.”

“Elementary school? And you kept it for this long?”

The red on Chuuya’s cheeks grew impossibly brighter.

“But wait—” Dazai continued, suddenly confused. “Didn’t you say you lived your whole life in France before coming to Japan for high school? The writing on this pin’s Japanese…”

“Just get on with it,” Chuuya snapped, tone venomous. He kicked the one that Dazai hadn’t picked up towards him. “If we spend any more time outside, you’ll get frostbite and freeze to death. I hear that’s quite painful; first your toes will fall off, then your fingers, and if you’re lucky, eventually your heart will stop.”

A mean part of him wanted to keep prodding that new sensitive part he had stumbled upon, but Dazai showed remarkable self-restraint in keeping his mouth shut and moving to place the points of the two badges inside the lock. He wiggled it around in there for a moment, testing out the mechanisms, before hearing a click. 

The lock fell off easily and he caught it with one hand. With the other, he regarded the badges carefully and gave them back to Chuuya. 

“I’m not sure you can wear them again, but keep them if you want.”

Azure eyes passed over one of them without much thought (it was Chuuya’s Class Captain badge for this year), but lingered on the tennis one. Dazai didn’t say a word as something akin to melancholy passed through Chuuya’s face. The boy tucked both of them into his pocket, before striding past Dazai to push open the doors. A second later, Dazai followed him inside the room. 

Sooner or later, he knew a time would come when answers would be revealed to him. But that time was not only one month and a half after their first meeting. For now, he was willing to be patient; especially since he too was nowhere near ready to spill the secrets of his own past to Nakahara Chuuya, of all people.

A wave of dust blasted him as he stepped over the threshold. He and Chuuya grappled for the lights; Chuuya let out a triumphant yell when he found the switch first, flipping it up to bathe the room in fluorescent yellow.  

The room was a spacious area filled from floor to ceiling with shelves of all sorts of cleaning material; mops, buckets, disinfectants. He inspected one of the gym mats leaning against the wall (why store gym mats up here? Oh well) before dragging two over and placing it in the middle of the room where there was a blank space. 

Chuuya slammed the door shut and slipped a broomstick between the handles. 

“There,” he said, clapping his hands. “That should do it. How long will we stay here for?”

“I don’t know,” Dazai admitted. He examined his still-bloody fingers while he plopped down on one of the mats. Chuuya whistled as he saw the setup and made his way over. 

They let the conversation die there. Despite the general show of level-headedness both of them had displayed thus far, an air of uncertainty hovered around them like a swarm of wasps. It was so tangible that Dazai whisked his hand through the air, swatting a couple of them away. 

Even that simple movement caused him to wince. He dug around in his trouser pockets and happily held up the spare rolls of bandages he’d never been so glad to have with him. 

“Oi, don’t use it all,” Chuuya said. “We might need them later.”

“Yeah, duh,” he snarked, picking at the hem of his shirt. “Slug, could you turn around?”

He hated the way the words came out so quiet.

“Why? Oh— nevermind, yeah sure.”

Both of them shuffled to face opposing walls.

Dazai shrugged off his blazer and then started to unbutton his blouse, discarding both items of clothing to the side as he regarded the garden of bruises blooming on the uncovered parts of his torso. The sections that were hidden by lines of cloth were no longer ivory but a nausea-inducing mixture of red and brown— blood and dirt. 

“Can I look now?” the other boy called, voice breaking the silence. 

“This is not a fucking surprise party,” he snapped back. “Have some patience.”

“Right, sorry,” Chuuya murmured. The worst part was that he sounded as if he meant it. 

“It’s fine.” He reached behind himself painstakingly, undid the clip that was holding the bandages together and pulled each layer off. Bundling them together he curled his fingers into the coarse fabric, inhaled deeply, and then began the soothing ritual of wrapping himself back up— heart, lungs, skin and all. 

***

65 Minutes Earlier

Officer Murase leaned back in his chair, taking a long drag of his cigarette. The musky scent wafted unrestrained around his office; it was almost enough to distract him from the stench of death that lingered far too often in the corridors of the police station. 

He tapped his earpiece with one finger. “Any news on the intruder?”

“No, sir,” his second in command, Shimizu, replied. “We’ve surrounded the building that he was reported to have entered.”

“No sign of Dostoevsky at all?”

“None, sir.”

Grimacing, Murase rubbed his temple. “Alright, prepare to enter. Is everyone armed?”

Shimizu barked orders off to the side, before returning to the walkie-talkie. “They are now, sir.”

“In that case, make sure you proceed with caution. Dostoevsky is highly dangerous and trained in combat. He’s probably also carrying a weapon, so be on your guard at all times.”

As Shimizu gave her assent, Murase rubbed his temple and tried not to let his frustration show. It went against every instinct in his body to be sitting back like this while his subordinates dealt with the issue, but the ankle he had broken three months back ensured that he wouldn’t be going into the field for a while yet.

The door creaked open. 

“Murase-san, how’s the mission going?”

“Fukuzawa-san!” he blurted out, standing up immediately and offering a deep bow to the Chief of Police. “Everything is progressing as planned. The team has just entered the building.”

Leaning down beside him, Fukuzawa placed his hands on the desk to gaze attentively at the live security-camera footage Murase had pulled up on his laptop. “So, do you have any ideas as to why Dostoevsky would target this school?”

Murase shrugged. “It’s one of the most populated in Japan, taking local, nation-wide and even international students alike. Some of the children of the most influential go here; like Yuan Meilan, the daughter of a Chinese billionaire.”

Fukuzawa narrowed his eyes and said, “In other words, we would have quite the catastrophe on our hands if someone like her gets injured.”

“Precisely, right? Dostoevsky’s probably on a revenge spree of sorts. This would be an excellent place to strike.”

The older man hummed pensively. “Perhaps. It seems unlike him though. He is cruel, yes, but he does not act for such petty things like vengeance.”

“You speak as if you know him,” Murase dared to say, the question in his words clear. 

“I did meet him briefly,” Fukuzawa admitted. “It was when they first arrested him. I went to the prison along with Fukuchi Ouchi to… talk.”

A kind substitute for the word ‘interrogation’. 

“He was a curious man, only twenty-one at the time. I do remember feeling very unnerved that someone of such youth could possess so much cunning and bloodlust. It’s an accepted fact among the higher-ups of the police and the Special Intelligence Department that we still haven’t uncovered all of the torture facilities that he created during the war, and that the death count is at least a few hundred or even a few thousand more than the official numbers we released to the public.”

Murase shivered, taking his eyes off Fukuzawa to focus back on the screen. Upon it, he could see his team moving along as pixelated dots through the corridors, guns at the ready. He intertwined his fingers, wringing them until the skin turned red. 

“Be careful,” he ordered through the earpiece. 

“Of course, Mura-san. We are—”

The radio disconnected. He was on his feet before he knew it, clicking frantically through the panels of footage as he looked for the location where Shimizu was meant to be. 

“Here, stop!” Fukuzawa said, pointing to the screen. “That’s Shimizu-san, right?”

Murase nodded, forcing himself to take deeper breaths through the pounding of his heart. He focused his eyes on the scene in front of him, trying to ignore the way Fukuzawa had inhaled sharply. 

The figure he recognised as his second-in-command had collapsed on the floor, surrounded by the rest of her squad who were in similar positions. Standing over them was a small group of hunched forms; students, judging by their clothing. 

“What on earth?” he murmured, zooming in. “Did those kids do that?”

Fukuzawa opened his mouth to speak but shut it abruptly as the first of the fallen officers began to rise, contorting his limbs unnaturally and staggering upwards. There was a click as Murase moved the security camera slightly to the right; the students and that officer looked towards the sound instantly, and he flinched back as he caught sight of their faces. 

Cracked, stone-like skin. Bloodshot eyes. Bleeding gums. 

For a moment, he wished that Yokohama International School wasn’t so fucking rich. Then, perhaps he could’ve been spared all these details. He barely paid attention as Fukuzawa began typing into his phone and making calls, too stuck on what was happening on the screen. 

“Swipe left, Officer. Let’s see how the others are doing,” Fukuzawa ordered, snapping Murase out of his trance. 

“Yes, sir,” he responded. 

They both flinched as the next footage showed almost the exact same thing; a group of students leaning over police officers. He noticed this time that one of the kids was riddled with bullets and yet moved easily without pain; and tensed as she sank her teeth over and over into the neck of one of his men. 

“Murase-san, I’m sorry but I must leave you here,” Fukuzawa said suddenly, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’ve contacted Yukuchi-san, Head of the Special Intelligence Department about this situation, and I am going to go take a look at it in person.”

“Wait!” Murase said, standing up. “Take me with you. These are my subordinates, after all. I deserve to know what is happening to them.”

On the screen, the rest of the police officers got to their feet and hurtled down the hallway, seemingly with no purpose or direction in mind. 

The older man hesitated at first, but eventually acquiesced. “Very well. Follow me.”

Normally, it would take about twenty minutes by car to get from the local police station where Murase worked to Yokohama International School. With Fukuzawa’s weaponisation of the siren and surprisingly reckless driving, they made it in ten.

He placed his hand on the gun perched at his hip and stepped out of the car, surveying the building that Dostoevsky was reported to have entered. Yokohama International School was divided into three campuses; one for elementary, junior high and eventually high school students. Each year had their own separate buildings to learn and socialise in; Dostoevsky had targeted the high school second-years. 

It was no mystery why. The second-years of YIS were famed for having the ‘blood of royals’ in their midst. Of course, they didn’t quite literally host any royalty; but for all the children of the rich and famous present in that cohort, they practically might as well have. 

If Dostoevsky wanted to deal a blow to the reputation of Japan, he had picked the right place. 

Murase started forward as Fukuzawa trailed behind him, his own gun drawn. They had taken no more than just five steps on school grounds before they glimpsed two figures running towards them at full pace. The lashing storm obstructed his view; Murase drew his gun as a precaution and placed his finger on the trigger. 

“Wait!” one of the students cried as they came into view. “Don’t shoot!”

“Who are you?” Murase shouted, struggling to make himself heard over the rain. 

“Shirase Ren! I’m here with Yuan Meilan. We’re not a threat, I promise! So put the damn gun away!”

“Murase-san,” Fukuzawa said, pushing his arm down. It had been trembling. “They’re just children.”

“We saw children attack my subordinates!” he argued. “How do we know that these two won’t do the same?”

“The people you saw attacking others were probably the zombies,” Yuan piped up. They were now close enough that he could make out their youthful features; large eyes, rain-slick hair and red cheeks. Not the creepy messes of ravaged skin that he had seen through the lens of the security camera. 

“Zombies?” he echoed, finally processing that full sentence. 

“Yes, they—”

All four heads whipped to the side as they heard the pattering of feet. The ‘zombie’ was upon them almost instantly, its movements jerky and yet terrifyingly quick. 

“Get the children to the car!” Fukuzawa yelled, firing shots into its chest. The zombie stumbled but did not falter. 

Murase obeyed without a second thought, grasping Shirase and Yuan’s wrists with each one of his hands and throwing them into the backseat of the car, strapping himself into the driver’s seat. Moments later, Fukuzawa was beside him as the zombie slammed itself over and over against the door. 

“Drive!” Shirase shrieked, eyes wide with fear as more zombies began pouring out of the school gates. All their gazes were fixated on the police car, the thump of beating hearts and the stench of sweat drawing them closer like a moth to a flame. 

Slamming his feet on the accelerator, the car screeched backwards, crushing the zombie that had gone after them earlier underneath its tires. Then, it sped off. 

Briefly, Murase glanced back behind them through the rearview mirror. Zombies were flooding out of the school, making their way onto the streets. The one that he had just run over was getting back up, even as its back was a mass of pulp and its head hung at an unnatural angle. 

He decided to stop looking.

The drive back to the police station was both silent and yet bustling with noise. Fukuzawa was arguing spiritedly with another man over the phone, talking about lockdowns and quarantines and potentially organising rescues for survivors. Murase was not so confident that there would be any. 

Neither Shirase nor Yuan spoke, except to occasionally cough. At one point he swore Yuan had begun crying, although she wiped her tears away quickly and plastered a blank expression on her face. 

“Can you two tell us exactly what happened?” Fukuzawa asked once he had hung up. 

“S-sure,” Shirase said. “There was an alarm in the school that an intruder had entered during morning break, so everyone went back to their classrooms. In our classroom, there was a bug that came in through the vent. My classmate Akira-chan tried to kill it, but it— it— crawled into her and she turned into a zombie. Then she attacked Sato-kun and Myazawa-sensei. And I didn’t stay to watch anymore, I just grabbed Yuan and got out of there as soon as possible.”

“Smart,” Murase said, softening his words. “Is there any more?”

“All the rest of the classrooms had also been infected,” Yuan added. “We saw them all filled with zombies. Luckily most of them were still barricaded when we made our escape, so we didn’t really encounter any. But by now, most of those barriers will have definitely broken down.”

Fukuzawa rubbed his temples. “How many people are in your year?”

Shirase and Yuan exchanged looks. “I’d say about five-hundred? I think there’s more than that though. At least five-hundred.”

Five-hundred. Five-hundred infected kids running around infecting others; not to mention his subordinates, which had all no doubt been decimated by now. He would give himself time to grieve later. His priority now would be figuring out a method to keep the spread contained — he had watched many zombie movies in his lifetime, and each of them made clear how quickly something like this transmitted through the population. 

They pulled into the parking lot of the station. Murase escorted the kids inside, explained the situation to his secretary, and promised them everything would be okay. Then, he joined Fukuzawa inside his office. 

“I’ve contacted the government about the situation,” the other man said as Murase took a seat opposite him. “They’ve instructed me to completely close down the school; shut the gates, place emergency combat officers around its perimeter, all that stuff. After, we’ll fly a helicopter overhead looking for survivors. This way, we plan to limit the infection as much as possible.”

“Yes, that seems—”

He was cut off by the appearance of his secretary pushing open the door. “Apologies, Murase-san. The emergency response department is getting flooded with calls about those zombies that you told me about earlier. We don’t have enough staff nor phones to deal with all of it. What should we do?”

“Ah,” Fukuzawa said, appearing much too calm for the situation. “It seems that we are too late.”

“Respond to as many of the distress calls as you can,” Murase directed, choosing to ignore his superior’s words. “Prioritise the ones that are the easiest to accomplish. Send no more than two police on a singular mission; we cannot afford to squander manpower, so debrief them on the zombies. Although that part, given all the films they’ve no doubt watched, should be self-explanatory enough. They must not get infected.”

“Yes sir,” the secretary said and ran off. 

“I know it’s a useless endeavour, so you don’t need to keep looking at me like that,” he said to Fukuzawa, not bothering to turn to look at him. 

“I don’t think saving people is useless,” Fukuzawa said gently. “But our efforts need to be focused on containment, not rescue.”

Murase stood up. “I’ll leave containment up to you. I don’t have the manpower to do something like that anyway.”

He strode away but stopped in the shadow of the doorway. “I’m going to rescue as many as I can.”

***

Presently, 

Chuuya grabbed one of the mops and inspected it carefully. He gave a nod of satisfaction, wedged the cleaning-end between two of the shelves and pulled with all his strength. It came free with a pop, until he was just left with a wooden stick. 

“Yo, Mackerel, do you remember how you kill zombies?”

“Slice off their heads or burn them,” Dazai said automatically. “Actually, I think it depends on the movie.”

Chuuya cocked his head to the side. “Will impaling do?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, that's all we’ve got for now.” Chuuya carried over the stick to what appeared to be a shovel, and began sharpening it against the metal. “Man, I wish I had one of my katanas right now.”

“Me too!” the other boy said cheerfully. “I would cut my throat with it.”

Reaching over, Chuuya tugged sharply on one of his strands of chocolate hair. Dazai yelped and scrambled over to a sitting position to punch Chuuya solidly on the shoulder in response. However, he withdrew his hand almost as soon as it connected with bone, hissing at the drops of blood that had begun to well up. 

“Idiot,” Chuuya said. 

“This is all your fault, chibi!” Dazai complained. “If you hadn’t provoked me, I wouldn’t have worsened my injuries.”

“If you hadn’t started talking about suicide again, I wouldn’t have provoked you at all,” he countered. 

“Well, what else am I meant to talk about?” Pouting, Dazai flopped back onto the gym mat and placed his arms over his eyes. 

“Anything other than suicide,” Chuuya insisted. “School, maybe?”

Dazai snickered, turning to his side so that their eyes met. “We’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, and nerdy Chuuya still wants to talk about school.”

The raspberry Chuuya blew him was so glorious that droplets of spit landed on Dazai, who made the most disgusted face he’d ever seen on a human being as he wiped it away. 

“Since chibi spat on me, he owes me a favour,” Dazai decided. 

“I do not. What favour would you ask of me anyway?”

“To kill me,” the boy said without any hesitation.

Chuuya tried to pinch him again but this time Dazai ducked under his arm, rolling away. “Actually, let’s play a game.”

Curiosity got the better of Chuuya, though he had a distinct feeling that he would regret agreeing later. “What kind of game?”

“My favourite game! Charades!”

“Charades? I didn’t know you liked charades.”

Through the short amount of time he’d known that manic, the only things he had ever shown excitement towards was suicide, Shirase-hate and beating Chuuya in pop quizzes. 

“Silly dog thinks he knows things about me,” Dazai said mildly, cutting over Chuuya as he tried to protest. “Here’s the rules: we have to think of an object to act out, and if the other person guesses it right, we get a point. The object must stay the same, so no cheating to get more points!”

“How dare you. I never cheat.”

“Yes, yes, chibi’s such a wonderful person, I’ve heard it all before. Now let’s get started!”

Two hours later, they had played what Chuuya estimated to be over one-hundred rounds, and his stick-sword was almost completely sharpened. He went outside to take a breath of fresh air, Dazai hot on his heels. The sky had cleared up to reveal the almost-psychedelic cerulean of mid-afternoon. 

He glanced over the edge of the balcony and gasped. 

“Dazai, look,” he said softly, pulling the other boy over by the elbow. 

“Slug should not touch me with his slimy hands,” Dazai said sourly, although he trailed off once he glimpsed what Chuuya was looking at. 

The school was surrounded by police dressed in full riot gear. Zombies pressed at them, clawing and scraping at their armour. To their horror some of the creatures broke through, unfazed by bullets to rush into the street. Waiting troops managed to restrain a few, but that didn’t stop others from escaping out into the neighbourhood. 

“Useless,” Dazai muttered vehemently. “Can’t they see the obvious gaps in their blockade? Gods, police these days are so fucking incompetent.”

Chuuya whirled to face him, aghast. “How can you just say that? These are the people working to rescue us!”

“Where?” the other boy said, gesturing wildly. “Maybe I’m blind or something, but I don’t see us getting rescued!”

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Chuuya stood as close to the edge as he dared to go and shouted down, “Hey! Up here!”

His words were whisked away by the wind and scattered into nothingness. 

“That isn’t going to work,” Dazai said, pulling him back by the collar. Chuuya wrestled himself free and turned onto him with furious eyes. 

“Why not?” he demanded. 

“Don’t you see what they’re doing? If their intention was to rescue, teams would’ve charged into here already to look for survivors. Instead, they’re all just standing out there; they want to stop the spread, not save people like us who are probably already dead.”

Chuuya shoved him back. “Don’t you dare say that. We are not!”

“Even if they saw us, they wouldn’t bother coming up here,” Dazai said mercilessly. “For all they know, we could be part of the infected. And besides, they need to conserve their machinery and their manpower; and the risk of coming into an area where there are so many zombies is not one they’re willing to undertake for the sake of only two kids.”

“We are their duty!” Chuuya snapped. “This is their fucking job!”

“Yeah, it would be, normally. But wouldn’t you agree that this is a very special circumstance? Face it. We’re fucking doomed. Either we starve or the zombies get us. Best you use that new weapon of yours to impale yourself before you face a much worse fate at the hands of the undead.” 

Grabbing Dazai’s shirt, Chuuya pushed him against the wall. “Shut the fuck up! They will come to get us eventually.”

Dazai smiled at him tiredly. “Okay. If you think so then it must be true.”

Chuuya let him drop to the ground. He was just about to storm back into the maintenance room before they heard the whine of a megaphone echo through the air. 

“If there are any survivors of Yokohama International School,” the officer at the front of the lines intoned, “We are setting up a camp behind this blockade that will ensure your safety — if you can make it there. It will be open for forty-eight hours at the most, before we have orders to go in there and destroy everything. My deepest apologies; we have no other ways of rescuing you.”

Freezing, Chuuya swivelled back to make eye contact with Dazai. 

“I told you so,” the boy said. “They’re not coming to get us.”

“Didn’t you hear what he just said? There’s a camp behind them where they’ll keep us safe, if we can get to it.”

“And don’t you have any situational awareness?” Dazai shot back. “To get there, we have to make our way down a building of the infected. We’ll definitely get bitten.”

Gripping his sleeve, Chuuya tugged him back inside the maintenance room where he sat down and thumped the sharp end of his stick against the floor. “Good thing we have forty-eight hours to create a plan to ensure that doesn’t happen.”

Dazai paused for a moment, before shrugging. “Fine by me. Maybe this will even kill me in the process.”

Chapter Text

Day 2 - 22nd May, 2021:

His phone had died somewhere in the night, Chuuya found out the next morning as he groggily tried to check the time only to be met with a dark screen that refused to light up. 

Well, that was irritating. 

Dazai snuffed around in his sleep, occasionally murmuring indecipherable phrases. His cheek was smushed up against the mattress; he looked disgustingly, unbearably young. Normally he had a plaster on his left cheek and bandages covering his right eye, but given their lack of medical tape, his face was oddly bare. 

Chuuya placed a hand on his shoulder, ready to shake him awake, and then hesitated. 

Back in their dormitory, he would only manage to catch Dazai sleeping probably once in a blue moon. Whenever he startled awake from the nightmares that would plague him, the other boy was always hunched on his own bed across Chuuya’s in the corner, the blue light of his laptop lighting up the nooks and crannies on his face as he worked on assignments and answered questions. 

Their rivalry meant that he tried to copy those same habits more than once; but after a few failed attempts, he’d decided that he was rather interested in staying sane. 

Not that the same could ever have been said for Dazai, of course. 

Chuuya removed his hand. Best to let the bastard sleep for a while longer. Their upcoming expedition was no small thing. 

The plan was to bulldoze their way through the upper hallways where all the classrooms were. That part should be reasonably okay, given that most of the zombies had likely departed that particular area since it was their place of origin. Afterwards, they would take the elevator down to the third floor where the dormitories were, and fetch supplies they had stored there. It was their contingency plan; should the worst come to fruition, like for instance if the police’s camp was overrun, they would be able to lock themselves away and stay alive for a while longer. Chuuya also kept his collection of martial arts instruments there, so it was crucial they retrieve those in order to bolster their defence against the zombies. 

They had spent the rest of last night sharpening out four mops to such an extent that a press of its end to their fingertip would draw blood. Dazai had eagerly volunteered, and Chuuya was content to let him. It wouldn’t stop the zombies completely, but it should at least slow them down. 

Beyond that, they had sliced into their arms and soaked spare bandages in blood. If it was true that zombies would respond to the scent of human flesh, that much should provide a suitable distraction if they were cornered and desperate.

The journey should be simple enough; most of it would be carried out by going down the elevator anyway. 

Chuuya snapped out of his thoughts as Dazai gave a heaving gasp and sat straight up, sweat shining on his skin. His wild eyes focused on Chuuya, before the terror present in them melted away. 

“You alright?” Chuuya asked him gruffly. 

“How long was I asleep for?” Dazai said, ignoring the question. 

“Who knows? A normal amount of time, probably.”

Dazai got to his feet, shaking his head. “No, no, I have to know.”

He threw open the doors to the room, drinking in the sun. Chuuya remained where he was, observing the way Dazai practically slumped with relief after getting his answer. 

“Seven hours,” the boy muttered, mostly to himself. “That’s fine, I think.”

There were words bubbling up inside of Chuuya but he shoved them away in favour of sticking to his preferred bluntness. “Come on. Let’s start moving soon.”

“You’re right,” Dazai announced, stretching his limbs and picking up two of the sharpened mops. “Ready?”

“This soon? I thought at least we’d…”

“We’d what?” the other boy countered. “Waste time? The sooner we can escape this hell, the better.”

“Never thought I’d see you taking the initiative,” Chuuya teased, standing up. They headed towards the exit. “Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go.”

“Chuuya admitted that I’m right! Yay, that’s the achievement of my life. He finally recognises what everybody already knew: that I’m far better, smarter and hotter— argh!” Dazai stumbled as Chuuya kicked his shin. “Who knew the ‘hotter’ part was what you’d get hung up on.”

“Shut up, Mackerel,” Chuuya hissed. He held up the two brooms like a spear and gestured with his chin for Dazai to open the roof-door. 

Obligingly Dazai reached for the handle, only hesitating for a second before pushing it down and out and jumping back hastily as Chuuya rushed forward, should something come leaping out at them. 

Thankfully, only darkness greeted them. But from here on out, their scent was likely being broadcasted to every zombie present in the school; sooner or later, they would come to feed. 

Dazai’s hand latched onto the back of Chuuya’s blazer as they ran, jogging carefully down the stairs before breaking into a full-on sprint through the corridors. The elevator, annoyingly, was at the very end of all the classrooms and opposite the path to the roof. It was generally used by teachers as a shortcut; students were usually delegated to the staircase beside it. 

Chuuya channeled all his focus onto reaching that part, but he couldn’t stop himself from taking in the destruction that surrounded them on both sides. Glass crunched under their feet as they passed broken classrooms. Tables and chairs had been overturned, holes were smashed through windows and doors, and omnipresent stains of vermillion haunted the walls. Somewhere off to his left he heard a faint growl, but luckily it belonged to a zombie whose leg had been crushed to bits in a stampede that had no doubt happened, and could no longer move. 

By some miracle, they made it to the elevator uncontested. The wait for it to arrive felt like an eternity; the melodious ‘ding’ it gave as it did so was akin to the tolling of a churchbell informing every zombie of their existence — although, it was more than likely that they already knew. 

Chuuya heaved a breath as the doors closed. He twisted the makeshift spears in his hands and used it to push down the ‘three’ button. It glowed green and then he felt a slight bump as the elevator began moving down. 

Their arrival came far too soon. He felt Dazai press closer to him on instinct as the automatic voice said ‘level three’ and the machine came to a halt. 

They both stumbled back as a rotted hand curled around the slowly opening doors and wrenched the rest of it open with inhuman strength. 

“Stand behind me,” Chuuya ordered as four zombies came into view, evident hunger exacerbating their monstrous features. “Keep the weapons at ready. I—”

He was cut off as all of them rushed him at the same time, inhuman enough to take that approach instead of just going one by one. Two of them he swept down instantly with the blunt end of his sticks, smashing it against their torsos with enough strength that the crack of bones reverberated against plasticine walls. 

The others rushed towards Dazai but Chuuya grabbed him by the hand and yanked him backwards so hard that he tumbled to the ground as he tossed one stick from his right hand to his left and speared both of the other zombies at the same time. 

For a moment he met eyes with each of them as they clawed desperately towards him, bodies pinned in place by the sharp point leveraged through their ribcage. Chuuya took that brief respite to survey the hallway carefully; deeming it empty, he kicked Dazai savagely towards the direction of their dorm. 

“Get the fuck out of here! Go open the door for me. I’ll be there in a second,” he said. 

Dazai looked at him with an unfathomable expression, before nodding and pelting away at full speed. Chuuya waited to hear the slam of wood and the creak of hinges, before turning his attention back on the zombies at hand. 

During that short period of time they had purposefully impaled themselves further along the stick in a desperate bid to reach him. His heart pounding in his ears, Chuuya turned his focus first on the one in his right hand. He turned that stick downwards so that the zombie too was lying horizontally, and then slammed his foot down on both its legs until shards of bone peaked through flesh. Then, he did the same to the other. 

If Shitty Dazai was right, only a beheading would be able to end them completely. Once he got his hands on his swords, that would be possible. But at this moment, maiming will have to do. 

He could not believe that thought just went through his mind. Withdrawing the sticks, he winced at the wet squelch and ran after Dazai, not sparing any of those monsters a final look. If he did, he was afraid that… 

Well, death had distorted the features of the undead, but not so much that if he looked past the matted hair and greyish skin, he could perhaps recogni—

Chuuya pounded against the door of the dormitory. “It’s me, Mackerel!”

Dazai opened the door with such force that he stumbled and tripped, steadying himself against the wall. 

“Shut up,” he said as Dazai rounded on him after closing the door with gleeful eyes. “Don’t you dare say a word.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything, chibi,” the other boy cooed. 

A thump on the other side of the wall stopped his next words. 

“We have to be quick,” Dazai said after a moment, all traces of humour dissipated. 

“I know. You grab the food and I’ll get my swords.”

“Slug needs to stop giving me orders. It’s discomfitting,” Dazai muttered. 

Chuuya shoved him with no real anger behind it and went off to his room while Dazai searched through their cabinets. He knelt down under his bed and groped blindly around for a moment, before his fingers closed around the handle of one of the many suitcases he had brought with him from France. 

For as long as he remembered (which, admittedly, was not very long), his foster fathers had been insistent on him learning how to fight. It had started with basic self-defense moves; but as he progressed through the stages and nurtured his own hunger for knowledge, he developed proficiency for all sorts of styles and was able to handle a myriad of weapons. 

He had always preferred swords — well, katanas, in this case. His sensei would kill him if she knew he’d mixed the two up again. 

The ones in this trunk were mostly ceremonial, but that didn’t mean they would not be able to splinter spines and pierce flesh. Paul had told him as much anyway, much to Arthur’s disapproval. 

Dropping the sticks on his floor, Chuuya strapped two of his three katanas to his back and hefted the other one in his hand, comforted by its weight. He went to step out but caught his reflection in the floor-length mirror; the top buttons of his shirt had come undone, revealing the scar on his collarbone. It was faint against his skin, so much so that you wouldn’t even be able to see it unless you were looking for it. 

He traced the white lines of new skin carved over old — A5158 , an enigma. 

A tattoo , Paul had told him once, that they’d paid to get covered up. He refused to reveal any more than that, simply telling him that it was irrelevant. 

Chuuya tugged fabric over it and went outside to meet Dazai. 

The boy was waiting for him beside two large rucksacks stuffed with an assortment of the snacks and fruits they kept in their dormitory, as well as — to Chuuya’s amusement — both their laptops. 

“Are you sure you can carry all of that?” he asked, not even meaning it as a tease. It hadn’t escaped his notice that his thumb and pinky could form a ring around Dazai’s wrist and still have room left over. 

“Do not underestimate me, chibi,” Dazai threatened. “I may not work out obsessively like you do, or even leave our room most of the time, but that does not mean I am by any measure a weakling.”

Chuuya tried to convey all of his doubts in a single glance. “You should leave the gaming console behind.”

“But what if we get bored?”

“Frankly, I think that’s the least of our worries. If we make it out of this alive, I’ll buy you another one.”

Dazai’s cognac-brown eyes widened and sparkled. “Would you really?”

Offering him a small smile, Chuuya unsheathed his katana and stashed the scabbard in one of the rucksacks. “Sure. But like I said, it’s only if we make it out alive.”

The rucksacks banged against each other as Dazai hoisted them over his shoulders. He turned to face Chuuya, his expression teetering between amusement and determination. Giving himself a single second to breathe, Chuuya tightened his grip on the hilt of the katana and reached for the door handle. 

The first thing that became evident to him was that their luck had run out. He’d only eased the door open a fraction before a zombie immediately slammed towards him, scrabbling at the polished mahogany and growling underneath its breath. 

Chuuya slammed the door shut once more, panting hard. He twisted his neck to look back at Dazai. “I don’t trust you with my katanas, so keep those sticks on hand, okay? If any of them even come near you, stab them. I’m not sure they feel pain, so go for anything that will hinder them; their eyes, their legs, their hands. If you feel even close to being overwhelmed, shout my name and I’ll come for you.”

“I’ll be okay, chibi,” Dazai said brightly. “I’m not useless in a fight.”

“You kind of are. Wait, I have an idea.” He set down his katana on a cabinet and reached for Dazai’s desk chair; a large, misshapen thing six times his bony frame in width and twice in height. It was the other boy’s hiding nook on days when his mood turned sour and the look in his eyes shifted from suicidal to something else Chuuya couldn’t quite decipher. 

It was also a perfect shield of sorts that would protect them from the horde of undead lingering just meters away. Chuuya gestured towards it. 

“Get on.”

Dazai shot him a baffled look. “Excuse me?” 

“I hope this chair doesn’t mean too much to you,” Chuuya said, “and if it gets destroyed I’ll get you this and a console for your seventeenth birthday.”

“You don’t even know when my birthday is. I’ve never told you.”

“I’ll figure it out,” he replied with as much confidence as he could muster, taking the bags from Dazai to set them on the seat of the chair. Eventually, with a huff, the other boy sat down, tucking his legs in beneath him. 

Tying a piece of rope around the armrest and attaching it to his upper arm, he felt a corner of his mouth tilt upwards as he regarded the contraption. 

“Have you ever ridden a rollercoaster before?” As Dazai nodded, Chuuya started to push him towards the door, the wheels of the gaming chair scraping along the carpet. “Well, y’know what they say, don’t you? Arms and legs inside the ride at all times, Mackerel. If anything tries to touch you, stab it.”

He fetched his blade from where he’d left it; and before Dazai even had the opportunity to register what was happening, Chuuya flung open the door, cut the first zombie in half, and with a hefty shove, sent the chair and its passengers cruising down the hallway. There was a tug along his flesh as the rope reached its limit and Chuuya sank sharp metal into the stomachs of three more zombies before pelting after Dazai. 

Thankfully, the mackerel was faring well. He had followed Chuuya’s advice and gouged out the eyes of any zombies that dared to approach him, skewering a couple more and shoving them off to the side. The rest, Chuuya decapitated. 

“This is a fucking crazy plan!” Dazai yelled as they took that moment to catch their breath, eyes fixated on the crowd of the undead that were preparing for a second wave. “If you had given me any warning in advance, I could’ve come up with something better.”

Chuuya grinned at him. “But isn’t this more fun?”

“Shut up chibi and get us to the elevator!”

“Of course,” he said, then sprung into action once more as the zombies overcame their apprehension (did they feel apprehension?) and surged towards them. He took down three before deciding that this was immensely inefficient — not to mention deeply tiring, although he’d never admit it — and gripped the seat of the chair, ignoring Dazai’s startled yelp as he drove it further along.

At the very last second he leaped onto it, slaughtering the zombies that tried to follow as the chair slid towards the elevator at the end of the corridor. 

“The Slug is sitting in my lap like a good dog,” came Dazai’s muffled voice. Chuuya elbowed him unrepentantly, fixated on the metal frame of the elevator as it drew ever closer. 

The chair hit the wall beside it with a tremendous bang, sending them sprawling to the floor. Dazai jabbed the button with his thumb as Chuuya severed the rope connecting him to the armrest with a flick of his finger. Using one leg he righted the fallen chair and sent it into the chests of the approaching zombies, knocking them back. 

With a war cry he lunged for them again, but was abruptly pulled back by Dazai and shoved into the elevator as the silver doors closed with a tranquility not fit for the current situation. And then, he could breathe again.

“You’re bleeding,” Dazai said, fingers ghosting a cut along one side of Chuuya’s neck. 

“It’s nothing,” he replied, leaning against the wall and closing his eyes as they began their descent to ground level. 

“It’s going to be something if it gets you infected,” the other boy said seriously, stepping closer to inspect it. 

“Seriously, I’m okay. What about you? Are you injured?”

“Chibi-chan, I barely did anything the whole time. I’m fine. Do you still have enough energy to make it from here to the police standing outside? We don’t want your tiny legs giving up on you halfway.”

“These tiny legs just decimated a whole pack of zombies,” he boasted, flinging up the bravado like a shield to distract from the fact that his hands were trembling and his grip around the katana’s hilt enough to paint his knuckles a worrying shade of alabaster. 

Dazai noticed, of course. Chuuya wasn’t sure why he’d ever been under the delusion that he could fool the one nicknamed ‘Demon Prodigy.”

Cold fingers closed around his shoulder; Chuuya had to stop himself from flinching as Dazai moved in, so close that they were almost nose to nose. 

“You have to calm down,” the boy drawled. “At this rate, you’ll get us both killed.”

“I know,” he snarled, forcing his frame to droop. “I know. I know, I know, I know. ”

He blinked his eyes rapidly, gasping for air. “I know, I know! ”

He jolted as Dazai placed two fingers under his chin to lift it up so that their gazes met. 

“I know you know, Chuuya,” he said gently, in a voice he’d never heard him use before. “Breathe for me, okay? It’s not over yet. You can finish this panic attack of yours when we’re snuggling together in the police station.”

“I’d rather be turned into a zombie first before snuggling with you,” Chuuya retorted, shrugging off Dazai’s too-cold hands and forcing himself to drink up the air.

“Likewise, but at least we’d be alive.”

Chuuya turned to him, not bothering to mask his surprise. “You want to stay alive?”

After a lengthy pause, Dazai said, “I’ve come to think that it’s worth a try.”

Perhaps Chuuya would’ve said something more but at that moment the elevator hit the ground with a slight tremor and he stiffened again. The doors parted; a singular zombie started towards them but Chuuya was there before it even took five steps forward, forgoing his sword in favour of the mutilated mop. He pinned it against the nearest wall and broke its leg. 

That was actually easier than severing its head, which was deceptively tough to cut through, even with his carefully maintained and sharpened blade. 

By the time he finished, Dazai had emerged from the elevator along with their supplies. Wordlessly, he handed Chuuya’s katana back to him. Then, they set off for the doors in the distance. 

At first they were merely walking, picking their way through the debris which suggested that zombies had made their way through here; but before Chuuya was fully conscious of it, he had started running, Dazai close on his heels as they tore through the last remaining barrier and emerged outside of the school. 

The first thing he heard was a cacophony of clicks as the policemen waiting outside promptly aimed their weapons at the two. Chuuya put his hands up instantly, nudging Dazai to do the same. 

“We’re not zombies!” he called. “We managed to escape.”

The policemen exchanged glances with one another, before nodding. “Come along, then. We’ll get you to safety.”

***

One Week Ago

Sakaguchi Ango had never seen his boss in such a state of disarray before. Forty-eight hours after the disappearance of Prime Minister Natsume and the normally neat desk of Fukuchi Ouchi had become a waterfall of cascading dossiers. Perhaps foolishly, he had also taken on the responsibilities of the Deputy in Taneda’s absence, with the latter having been rendered bed-bound by a serious case of pneumonia. 

Setting down the file he was scanning through, Ango massaged his brow. So far they had managed to keep the issue secret from the press and the public, but he was unsure how long this would last. Sooner or later, they were bound to find out. Which was why…

Right on time the door to his office slammed open, and Okura Teruko, Fukuchi’s second in command marched in. 

“Sakaguchi-san, there’s a mission—”

“No,” he said immediately. 

She frowned, squinting at him underneath a curtain of rosy hair. “I didn’t even finish my sentence.”

“And yet I know what you’re going to say.” He pushed up his glasses and leaned back in his seat. “‘Sakaguchi-san, there’s a mission Fukuchi wants you to do. Given the coinciding times of Dostoevsky’s escape and Natsume-san’s disappearance, he wants you to investigate any possible links between the two with the priority of finding Natsume-san as soon as possible.’ Did I get it right?”

“Fine, you did,” Okura huffed. “So why’d you say no? Your partner already said yes.”

“Odasaku doesn’t know what’s good for him,” Ango dismissed, without any malice behind it. “And besides, you ignore a key difference between the two of us: I am no longer a field agent. It is not even right to refer to us as ‘partners’.”

“You could be,” the woman argued, placing both hands on his desk and crouching down until they were eye-to-eye. “You were one of the best.”

“True, perhaps,” he acknowledged. “But I’m not anymore, and that’s just a fact. Right now, I much prefer working inside the safety of the department. You should ask literally anybody else, Okura-san. They’d be better at it than I would.”

Tilting her head, a strange gleam came into Okura’s eyes. He knew that look; it whispered of bad things to come (a nicer term for the psychological torture and manipulation the horrendously young woman was known for).

“And yet, it is your expertise that Fukuchi-sama wants,” she purred. “Do you know why, Sakaguchi-san? I bet you do and that’s why you refuse so vehemently. You’d be much more eager to accomplish the mission than anyone else, because this… this could be your redemption. ”

He felt all the blood drain from his face. The woman noticed, and her smile widened. 

“There are two common factors between all the agents in the Department of Special Intelligence. One of them, you have already named — that they would likely all be better suited for this mission than you. The second, you must already know — that each and every person working inside this department is aware that you are the one to blame for the leaking of the documents that caused the Great War.”

His flinch was full body. Okura prowled around the table to stand behind his chair, settling her arms over the back and peering down at him. 

“Fukuchi-sama has been kind enough to give you this opportunity to redeem yourself,” she cooed into his ear. Only years of training kept Ango from flinching. “And you are stupid enough to refuse it? Most disgraced agents like yourself would beg for something like this; and you , well, I think you especially should. Better to be a disgraced agent that left, after all, than to be one who stayed because of Fukuchi-sama’s blatant favourism.”

Ango slammed his hands down upon the wood, knocking back his chair on purpose so that Okura lost her grip and fell to the ground with a startled yelp. 

“I’ll go talk to Odasaku about potential leads,” he said through gritted teeth and stormed away without turning to see Okura’s expression, although he could imagine perfectly well the smugness that must be radiating off her in lavish amounts. 

But he ought to put that aside at the moment. As much as he hated to admit it, the things that woman had said were true; he did crave redemption the same way a stray dog craves a home or at least a bone. The mistake he had made in the days of his youth which had caused millions to lose their lives was a Damocles’ sword hanging over him — and even now, a decade later, the way his co-workers would mutter and glare when they thought he wasn’t looking grated on his nerves. 

Oh dear, he had fallen for Okura’s trap completely. Pushing it out of his mind, he shoved open the door and made his way into the corridor.

Sakunosuke Oda was waiting for him some meters outside his office, far away enough to seem casual. Ango stabbed a finger at him. 

“You expected this, didn’t you?” he accused, striding over. 

“I expected nothing. There were only things which were likely to happen and things which weren’t,” the man said mildly. “Coffee?”

Ango took the peace offering with a sigh. “Whatever. Where do you want to start with the investigation?”

Looking at him oddly, Odasaku beckoned for him to follow. 

“You never used to ask me for directions,” he remarked as they walked towards one of the several meeting spaces available for agents.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ango grumbled, even though he knew the answer. 

Odasaku led him to one of the hubs, scribbling their names on the whiteboard that hung the door with a marker tacked beside it. That made it clear the space was reserved for them, and it meant that no other agents would come in and use it even in their absence until those names had disappeared. 

“Have some confidence,” Oda said gently as they sat down on the desk in the room’s center. “You are still one of the best agents here.”

“Awfully generous of you,” he replied, smiling despite himself. “However, it would be unwise to dwell on the past.”

“Contrarily, I think the past is exactly what we need to focus on.” The man brushed russet hair out of his eyes and passed Ango a blank notebook from the shelves, as well as a pen. He then stood up, fetched a marker from one of the several lying around, and started to write on the dry-erase board that took up the entirety of the opposite wall. 

“Dostoevsky’s jailbreak and Natsume’s disappearance are undeniably linked,” he stated. “The only question is how. Any thoughts?”

“I suppose we need to start with the Great War.” Ango chewed on his pen thoughtfully. “Scratch that, we need to go back even further to the Silent War, perhaps even to my little… slip-up.”

Odasaku dipped his head and began to draw up a flow chart. “You wouldn’t happen to know the contents of those files you leaked, would you?”

“No,” he scoffed. “Fukuchi told me to transfer the files from one computer to the other so I did. How was I meant to know that the connection was malfunctioning that day? Or that there were hundreds of foreign agents waiting for a moment like this?”

“You must have been given some information. Try to remember,” Oda said patiently. 

Ango huffed, feeling patronised. “I do think it was about the weapon that the Japanese government had been developing alongside France and Germany. If England got their hands on that information, it would’ve been enough to trigger retaliation, wouldn’t it?”

Writing ‘weapon + alliance’ on the board, Oda nodded. “Yes, and that would have caused the start of the Silent War.” He drew an arrow off to the side and placed a box at its point, aptly labeled ‘the Silent War’. 

That had been a period before the Great War where the national espionage organisations of the four countries waged conflict in the shadows, through the exchange of infiltrators and data. Three years later, the fighting could no longer be silenced; and as such, the Great War broke out and lasted for four years. 

“Do you think we can find out what this weapon was?” the red-haired man asked. “That could give us some clues.”

Digging his nails into his palms, Ango shook his head. “It was a secret thing that only the very top of higher-ups knew about. Even Fukuchi is unaware, I think. Although to be fair, at that time, he was only Deputy Head of the department.”

“Natsume-san was Head of the department during this time, right?” Oda continued at Ango’s agreement. “So he must’ve known.”

“Most likely, yes.”

Before their discussion could continue, there was a sharp knock on the door. Ango got up to open it, and then bent a full ninety degrees as he caught sight of Fukuchi. 

“Fukuchi-san,” he murmured as Oda made a similar greeting. 

“No need to bow so low,” the man said, waving them off. “I see you’ve started on the mission I’ve given you? Good. I was worried you weren’t going to take on the mission, Sakaguchi-san.”

“I did not think myself worthy,” he said truthfully. 

“If you do not trust yourself, trust my decision,” Fukuchi declared, moving to study their notes. “What is this weapon you’re referring to? Is it the one from a decade ago?”

“Yes sir,” Oda said. “It was in the files that Sakaguchi-kun leaked accidentally, apparently. This conclusion has only been drawn by hearsay, however, so we cannot guarantee its accuracy.”

Fukuchi ran a hand through his greying hair and fixed his stony stare on both of them. “No, you’re right. There was indeed a weapon.”

Exchanging glances with Odasaku, Ango decided to jump off the metaphorical cliff. “Could you tell us what this weapon was?”

“I couldn’t, and not because I don’t want to. At that time, I was just barely high enough on the pecking order to know of its existence, and Oguri-san ordered it to be destroyed before I ever learnt the details.”

“Should we go pay him a visit?” Oda offered, tapping a finger on his chin. 

“I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Fukuchi replied. “You do know why he resigned as Prime Minister, yes? It’s directly due to his mismanagement of the Great War and the consequences of the weapon’s production. While he no longer holds office, it is still risky to anger him.”

Odasaku muttered his agreement but Ango was still fixated on something Fukuchi had just said. “The consequences of the weapon’s production? I thought it was never used.”

At these words the older man went rigid, turning to face them both. 

“What I’m about to tell you is classified information, alright? It is not to leave this room, and it is never to be spoken about outside the context of your mission.”

He waited for them both to give their assent before continuing. “Three years ago, just before the end of the Great War and during the reign of Oguri, a prodigal detective named Edogawa Ranpo found new information regarding Dostoevsky’s infamous human experiments. We knew of course the types of atrocities that he had committed, but Edogawa-san put a new one on that list; he said there was definitive evidence that pointed to Dostoevsky stealing that weapon and testing it on his hostages.”

“He stole it?” Ango blurted out before he could restrain himself. “How?”

“That was what Edogawa-san was investigating, but he never found out, although it is said that he came very close. I can give you his notes, if you want. He kept a journal.”

“Excuse me for my audacity, if he’s such a good detective why wasn’t he the one assigned to this mission?” he asked, pushing up his glasses. 

Fukuchi averted his eyes and took his hat off, pressing it to his chest. “Edogawa-san was always a free spirit. He was apparently investigating multiple cases at once; and he must’ve gotten too close to the answers in some of them.”

A cold gale brushed its fingers along Ango’s skin. “What are you saying?”

The Head of the Department of Special Intelligence was many things but tactful was not always one of them. With an exhausted sigh, he clenched his hands into fists and bit out two words. 

“He’s dead.”

***

Presently, 

The two of them were sat down in a room that in almost any other circumstance would be an interrogation chamber, but had been temporarily transformed into a pastel snoozefest, filled from corner to corner with pale pink mattresses and blankets. 

“Sorry,” the policeman leading them there said. “I live the closest to here so I had my wife bring some of my daughter’s spare things. That’s why it’s such a monstrosity.”

“I think it looks wonderful,” Dazai said honestly as he flopped down onto the nearest one and tucked his legs under him. “Gives a cozy vibe.”

The policeman offered him a half-smile. “Thanks. My name is Murase, by the way. I’d just like to ask you some questions about the zombies and your method of escaping, if that’s alright?”

“Perfectly fine,” Chuuya replied. “But before that, I also have a question, Murase-san. Did any other students from Yokohama International School pass through here?”

“Oh yes, there were two. Shirase-kun and Yuan-chan, I believe their names were. Yuan’s father picked them up early this morning by helicopter, of all things.”

Dazai didn’t even realise how anxious Chuuya had been about the state of his friends until he practically deflated with relief, as if someone had popped him with a pin. “Thank god.”

“Were you guys close?” 

“Only chibi,” Dazai cut in. “Not me, gods no.”

Murase laughed at Chuuya’s spluttering. “There’s a story there, but I’ll ask for it once this is all over. Can you guys tell me how you managed to escape?”

Fiddling with a corner of the rucksacks that the police had thankfully allowed them to keep, Dazai listened to the Slug’s annoying voice recount their exploits. Once Chuuya’s eyelids began to droop and his words to slur, Dazai quickly took over for him. 

By the end of it, the chibi was fast asleep, curled up against Dazai’s side, while Murase’s face had gone from curious to openly impressed. 

“It’s lucky that your friend is skilled at martial arts,” he commented. 

“Probably.” Dazai shrugged and smiled mischievously. “But I bet I could’ve gotten out even without his help.”

Chuckling, Murase pulled out a notebook from his pocket and began jotting down notes. “Shirase-kun and Yuan-chan have already informed us that the zombies infect others by biting, but would you say things like scratches can work as well?”

Dazai shook his head. “My hypothesis is that you need saliva to transmit the virus. Chuuya got scratched by one and he’s perfectly okay.”

“What about you? You’re wearing a lot of bandages; were those as a result of zombie attacks?”

“These are a personal choice,” Dazai said blithely, although a warning ran in the undercurrent of his tone. Murase, to his credit, was no fool and dropped the subject accordingly. 

“Is there anything else you can tell me about the zombies, Dazai-kun?”

“Weird as it might be to say, I’m not sure that they attack mindlessly,” he said, voicing the thoughts he’d been having all day. “They heard the elevator as it moved down and were waiting for us on the third floor; I believe that the only reason there was none on the first was because they travelled too slowly on foot to reach us in time. But a simple one-level descent from the fourth floor, where I think it originated, to the third, where they had slowly trickled down to, was easy enough. Besides, they showed some caution and restraint after seeing Chuuya’s skill.”

Murase’s head bobbed up and down as he jotted notes. Eventually he stretched, dusted off his pants and slid the notebook back into his pocket. “Do you have guardians I can contact to come pick you up?”

At this, Dazai hesitated. 

“Chuuya’s parents live in France,” he stated carefully. “And mine would not stoop to doing something so trivial. I’ll contact them myself later, so you should just leave us for now. I’m sure you have duties to attend to.”

The policeman shot him a look that was sickening in its pity. “Well, alright then. Come outside if you need anything. The door’s unlocked.”

“We’ll be fine.” 

It was at the sound of his voice that Chuuya’s eyes flew open and he sat bolt upright. “How long was I out for?”

“You snoozed through the entire interrogation,” Dazai replied, standing up to close the door that Murase had left open. “For someone who said just this morning that he would rather turn into a zombie than cuddle with me, you left quite the smear of drool on my jacket.”

Chuuya’s eyes widened comically and he started wiping at the fabric. “Fuck, did I really?”

“No of course not,” he giggled, and then burst into full-on cackles as Chuuya punched him none-too-gently. “You did make yourself comfortable by my side though.”

“Shut up,” the redhead muttered. “It was a moment of weakness. I’m so tired I could sleep for a hundred years.”

Dazai remembered the way Chuuya had blasted through the horde of undead like a crimson storm, graceful limbs decimating monsters and beads of sweat sliding down porcelain skin. He thought, fair enough .

“You could go back to sleep if you want,” he said. “We should be safe here—”

He was cut off as Murase stumbled in a panicked daze back into the room, slamming the door shut behind him and sliding the lock across. Moments later, they heard screams ring out through the station as a bloodied face showed through the sliver of glass imbued in metal. 

“You jinxed it,” Chuuya accused him. “Haven’t your novels taught you anything? You should never claim to be safe.”

Dazai raised both hands in mock surrender, ignoring the pounding of his heart as Murase turned to them both, pale as the bandages wrapped around him. “My bad.”

“Boys,” the policeman said, hurrying towards them. “I’m not sure how, but the zombies got through our defenses. We need to get out of here while we still can.”

“Wrong,” Dazai declared, holding up a single finger. “We are going to stay here until this all dies down, okay? And then , we will make a run for it. Chibi and I have enough food here to last us several days if we ration it, and frankly you look like you’ve eaten enough anyway.”

A lesser man would’ve responded to the insult but Murase just nodded, visibly forcing himself to calm down. “You’re right. We can’t be rash.”

“Rash people end up dead,” he said cheerfully, flattening himself out and pulling a blanket over his body. “Don’t disturb me now. Growing boys need their rest.”

Outside, the sound of gunfire overwhelmed the screams, until both eventually came to a halt. 

***

Approximately forty-six kilometers away, a girl in Tokyo examined the bug that had fallen onto her desk. 

Situated in the vents above her, a Russian man closed the jar where more lay writhing inside, and smiled. 

Chapter Text

Day 4 - 24th May, 2021:

He was going to kill himself. 

It had been two days since the zombies managed to infiltrate the police station and infect almost everyone inside. They still had no clues how, although Murase was eager to give them his hypotheses. 

Dazai had his own guesses, but he kept them to himself. 

Either way, the room which had seemed fairly open before now seemed to close in around them by each passing hour. Chuuya spent most of it sleeping or talking animatedly to the policeman, which frankly was beyond Dazai’s comprehension. What could be so interesting about such an obviously bland man? But then again, the slug had proven over and over that he had an awful taste in friends. 

Stretching, Dazai leaned back against the wall to observe the two as they reignited their conversation about the flaws of the criminal justice system. Their words hit him like dull punches; he knew those flaws intimately, reflected in his— ah, but that was irrelevant. 

What was sharper was the way Chuuya’s frame had begun to slump, the flush in his cheeks turning grey and the lustre fading from his hair. 

He had underestimated the amount of food and water it would take to keep the chibi going — that much was evident now. When he told Murase that they had enough supplies in a rucksack to keep them going for at least a week if they rationed it, he’d failed to consider that not everyone ate as little as he did. 

If this kept going, Chuuya would stay alive, yes, but barely so. Murase was a little older, had a little more toughness to his bones, but no one could survive long without food. Especially since their food was mostly the canned crab he’d stockpiled in every cabinet, as well as stray packets of pocky and the occasional mandarin which they rationed to a couple slices per every few hours since it was the only thing that had moisture content. 

“We need to leave today,” he said out loud. “I would be okay staying here for a few more days, but that’s because I eat very little generally. However, the both of you are a different story. If we drag this on any longer, by the time we deem right to leave, you will be too weak to even make it past the door. So we need to leave, and we need to leave today.”

“Murase-san let me use his phone,” Chuuya said quietly. “I called my fathers. They said that if I stayed put, they would come for me soon.”

“And you believe that?” Dazai snapped without really meaning to. “This city will be brewing with the undead by now. They are gruesome, vicious and hungry. You don’t think that they would take one step in, see the carnage, and immediately run for their lives? I wouldn’t even blame them if they did; throwing away three lives — their own and yours, when they fail to save you — was never worth risking themselves for.”

Before he knew it Chuuya was directly in front of him, fisting hands in Dazai’s shirt and slamming him back against the wall. He thought dazedly that perhaps he’d been wrong — the chibi’s strength and speed hadn’t diminished in the slightest. 

“Take that back,” Chuuya hissed, hot breath fanning against Dazai’s cheek. “They will come for me. They are good people, and good people don’t leave their child behind in a city with claws and fangs.”

“Liar,” he croaked. “There are no good people in this world — or, at least, there are no good people when push comes to shove like this. You cannot rely on humans to be your salvation, chibi. We’re in the same psychology class; you should know this by now.”

Chuuya’s grip tightened. “They will come,” he insisted. 

“Can they fight their way through a horde of zombies? It will be more than you ever faced at the school — by now, it’ll probably be at least a quarter of the city, all concentrated in this area where the infection started. No, scratch that. Will they even be allowed in? If the government has any sense they will have blocked off Yokohama’s border.”

“They’ll be allowed in,” Chuuya said as Dazai narrowed his eyes.

“They are not superhuman, chibi, and they would need to be to get to us,” he said slowly, spelling out what maybe the redhead, blinded by his righteousness, could not see. 

He hit the floor hard as Chuuya released him. There was an odd hesitation in his eyes, and Dazai knew then that there was something that had been kept from him. He wasn’t sure why he felt so betrayed.

“You would be surprised,” the other boy said softly, “how very superhuman they are.”

Getting to his feet, Dazai hooked his finger in Chuuya’s collar as the other turned to walk away. “What are you talking about? Who are your parents?”

Chuuya glanced back at Murase, who had been watching the whole exchange with an air of concern. “Not with him here.”

“Whisper it,” Dazai demanded. “I am placing the honour of my death in their hands, because I can’t escape unless you help. So the least you can do is tell me why exactly you have so much faith.”

He could see the indecision brewing in his eyes, but eventually Chuuya sighed and acquiesced. Moving closer, his lips brushed the shell of Dazai’s ear. 

“They’re top agents in France’s spy department,” he breathed, the words barely audible. “Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, ever heard of them?”

He had indeed. It was probably clear on his face, because Chuuya smiled triumphantly. 

“How,” Dazai said, and it was not a question.

“That part is none of your business,” Chuuya sneered. “But does that reassure you?”

Annoyingly, it did. Dazai did have a rather frantic interest in history; the names of Chuuya’s fathers were as familiar to him as the back of his own hand. Spies did not normally have their identities revealed to the public, but Verlaine and his partner, Rimbaud, had played such an instrumental role in the uncovering of Dostoevsky’s exploits and the ending of their war that most of Japan hailed them as heroes. 

Them, of all people, would be able to fight their way past the border guards and the undead, and them, of all people, would go back for their adopted son the same way they eased hundreds of Japanese torture victims to safety after saving their lives. 

Jealousy was not an unfamiliar emotion to him but he was taken aback by how much of it was flooding into his lungs and stealing his breath. His own father— no, no, no. This was not the time. 

He sighed, scratching at his bandages. Fine. Just this once, he would trust the Slug and hope that that faith led them to a place where he could dictate his own death. 

Now, there was a certain twinge in his stomach…

Before he could reach for the canned crab, however, they heard a metal scritching at the door. Dazai froze, gaze flickering to Chuuya who looked back with the same uncertainty. While zombies still lurked outside from time to time, most of them had fled into the neighbourhood. And besides, that was clearly the sound of a doorknob jiggling, which the zombies had never been intelligent enough to do — so what was going on?

Embarrassingly, Murase caught on first. 

“There’s a human out there,” he said, just as whoever it was began banging on the lock with a startling ferocity. It echoed through the room and spiralled away into the corridor, practically a tracker pointing zombies towards their direction. Then the noise abruptly stopped, to be replaced with faint, metal chimes as the lock clicked and the door was shoved open. 

Chuuya was next to him in an instant, wielding two katanas now instead of just one as they watched a bloodied woman fall into the room. She was covered in blood, the viscous liquid dripping off her face and hair. In one hand she held a knife; in the other was a ring of keys. 

Dazai watched as she lifted her head to regard them all, then widened her cracked lips to croak out, “Murase-san?”

The officer snapped out of his stupor and went to her side instantly, kneeling down to check her injuries. Although he was further away, Dazai was faster with his eyes. 

He didn’t know how he missed it before — there was a clear bite back around the back of her calf, half-hidden by the skirt she was wearing. 

“Get away!” he roared, pushing past Chuuya to hoist the woman up by the collar. From the corner of his eye, he saw zombies rushing towards the open door, attracted by the sound and the scent of blood. He tried to kick it closed, but the woman’s ridiculously long heels kept it lodged in place.

Murase turned towards him, wrath painting his features. “What do you think you’re doing? She’s human!” He gripped Dazai’s forearms and sank his nails in until he relented with a hiss of pain. 

“You dumb motherfucker,” he said incredulously. “Do you not see the bite mark on her leg? She’s going to turn in minutes, or even seconds! Should I count it down for you? Five, four, three—”

Ah, but their time was already up. 

The first zombie barged its way through with a banshee-like howl, and was almost immediately decapitated by Chuuya. But the second remained alive, as did the third and the fourth and the fifth as the redhead shooed Murase and Dazai into a corner and stood in front of them with his swords crossed. 

“We need to go back for her!” Murase said wildly. “I can’t— she’s an intern. I promised her parents that I would take care of her.”

“Sorry, Murase-san,” Chuuya said, panting from exertion as the remaining zombies retreated and regarded him with cautious stares. “Unfortunately, I have to agree with Mackerel here. She’s done for. It’s just like you told me, you know? The world is an unfair place — people who should go to prison don’t all the time. I don’t know if this woman ever deserved an awful fate, but she’s been bestowed by one and the only thing we can do about it now is to survive. I think this world is filled with good, Murase-san, so in another life she’d be living happily, I’m sure of it.”

A shadow passed through the policeman’s face before flitting away. Wordlessly, he drew out the gun that he kept tucked into his waistband and fired, bullets ripping through rotting tendons and rendering useless the legs that Chuuya didn’t already manage to break. 

“We need to close the door,” he said. “More of them are coming.”

“Finally, he sees sense,” Dazai muttered, walking over. For a moment he stared down at the intern, still curled up upon herself by the doorway. Her leg was gravely injured, restricting her movement; but already her skin was turning ashen as blood dripped from her pores. He lifted the heel of his foot and crushed it down into her eye sockets, one by one. She let out a keening wail that cut off almost as soon as it started — so it was more out of startlement, then. He was right. Zombies did not feel pain. 

Murase’s fists were clenched tightly by his side but he wisely did not speak as Dazai threw the woman out of the room and slammed the door shut. 

He turned away, sighing with relief, but then tensed up again as he caught sight of the horrified look on Chuuya’s face. The boy’s blue eyes were staring beyond him, at something outside. 

Slowly, he swiveled back. A hideous face was pressed against the glass of a small window situated on the door as mad eyes carved their way into his soul. He barely had time to process the mass of zombies clustered behind that first one, before a thunderous bang rang out and the door was forced open once more. 

The zombies were fast, but Chuuya was faster. He was there in a heartbeat, thrusting himself between Dazai and the crowd of the undead as they hurtled inside. 

“What the fuck!” Dazai shouted, reaching to grip the hem of Chuuya’s coat so that they would stay together. “That damn bitch must have broken the lock when she was trying to get in!”

Chuuya fended off the ones that came close to them, giving one of his katanas to Dazai who began swinging it in a wild arc around him. “Murase-san, we have to leave!”

The officer had found himself herded into a corner, shooting desperately at the zombies advancing on him. His head jerked up at the sound of Chuuya’s voice, and Dazai was unsurprised to find resignation evident on his face. 

“Yes, we do,” he shouted over the din of his gun. “But I’m not coming with you.”

“What?” Chuuya yelled, brows furrowing. “What the hell do you mean?”

Murase stopped firing, and for a moment it was blissfully quiet. 

Then he sprinted towards them with speed Dazai was unaware he had, forcefully jostling his way through the zombies to push them from the room and into the corridor. 

“Run,” he said, gazing down at them from where he was standing in the doorway. A zombie latched onto his neck but he didn’t seem to notice, fishing in his pockets and throwing them a set of keys, as well as his gun. “There’s cars in the garage — fourth door on your left. Go, as fast as you can. Most if not all the zombies surrounding the station should be in this room; I’ll make sure they never leave it.”

“Muras—” Chuuya cried, standing up and lunging for the man. 

Fabric teared as Dazai pulled him back and hit him in the stomach with the butt of the katana he was still holding. The redhead collapsed, coughing. 

Dazai met eyes with the other man. 

“Survive,” Murase said. 

“Okay,” he replied. 

Then he shoved Murase back into the room and slammed the door shut, removing the bandages from his wrist to securely tie the handle down. 

This , he told himself, was necessary.  

Two people on foot could make it to the garage. Three, with a crowd of zombies pursuing them, would be dead long before they could reach it. 

“Chuuya, we need to go,” he said, offering him a hand up. Chuuya gripped it tightly. “We need to—”

In one smooth move, before Dazai even had time to register anything, there was the strangest sensation of vertigo and he was flat on his back, breathing hard through the pain in his ribs. Chuuya bent down on top of him, one hand beside his head while the other pressed his katana to Dazai’s throat. 

“You motherfucker,” the boy hissed. “You pushed Murase-san into that room! You signed his death warrant!”

Dazai’s eyes narrowed and he knocked the gun Murase had given them into Chuuya’s forehead. 

“Are you stupid?” he whispered, digging the barrel into flesh. “Murase gave us an opportunity, chibi. I would have been a fool to waste it.”

“You are a fool,” Chuuya retorted, unrelenting. “Only a fool would value life as little as you do. Only a fool—”

His hand hit the trigger, the bullet shooting off to the wall behind Chuuya. The boy jolted, whipping around at the sound. That second of distraction was enough for Dazai to reverse their positions so that he was standing above the chibi, gun still pointed at his skull. 

“Listen here, Chuuya,” he said. “I don’t know what you believe, but here’s a fact: the world is unbearably cruel and indescribably horrible. Humans meander through their existences without ever finding the meaning to their lives, because it is all that they can do to just keep going on in the first place. You are one of those idiots who believe that the world is golden, when in reality it is anything but. You are one of those idiots who walk through your lives thinking that there’s something to gain from doing so — but let me tell you one thing, Chuuya. There isn’t. Your life is as meaningless as mine and Murase’s and an ant’s or a slug’s or a mackerel’s.”

Chuuya sucked in a sharp breath. 

“I’m happy to let you live out your delusion, if you want; frankly, it’s none of my business. But Murase gave you his life so that you could continue believing this world was worth your time — and you would waste that now? Arguing over pointless things while every zombie in the near vicinity comes to kill us? Are you fucking insane?”

He held his hand to Chuuya again. “Come on, Slug. We have to leave.”

This time, Chuuya clasped their fingers together and heaved himself upwards. 

“I’ll kill you someday, Mackerel,” he spat, striding away so quickly  that Dazai had to jog to catch up. 

“Feel free to.”

They hurried down the corridor and rounded the corner to find the garage that Murase had directed them to. Dazai clicked the car keys, waited for the telltale beep, and made sure Chuuya was inside before reeling open the door. The groaning creak was painful; in the distance he could see zombies rushing towards him but he got in the car before they could arrive and stuck the key in the ignition. 

The engine roared to life and Dazai carefully guided the car onto the streets. 

“Shouldn’t I be driving?” Chuuya said from the passenger seat. “I’m older.”

“You’re also dead on your feet and too short to reach the brakes,” Dazai said smugly, yelping as Chuuya leaned over to elbow him. “Don’t worry, chibi, I’ve driven before.”

Muttering angrily, Chuuya propped his head against the window. Minutes later, he was fast asleep. 

***

There was something holding his wrists and legs down. Chuuya thrashed against it to no avail; the cold metal simply dug further into his skin. 

It was as if he was underwater; his vision was blurred and the sounds echoing around him seemed to be coming from quite a distance away. Even so, he could make out the words. 

“He’s awake,” somebody said. “Sir, should we tranquilise him again?”

“Ah, no need,” came another voice. “It’s good that he’s somewhat aware of his surroundings. More interesting data can be collected this way. Prepare to inject the parasite into him once more.”

“Yes sir.”

The press of a needle prickled against his arm; Chuuya screamed around the rag stuffed in his mouth. He knew in his very bones that he had felt this sensation before — legs, so many legs burrowing into his flesh, carving tunnels into his bone. Lighting his nerves up first with raw agony, and then with nothing at all. Stakes driven in and out of his chest, searching for a reaction, only to find none. 

And then they would push something else into his body. The world would turn its lights off, he would hope that the end had come for him at last, but sooner or later he was revived and made to suffer the same thing over and over again. 

“Please,” he begged, squirming as the needle was pushed in. “Please!”

He lashed out, clawing at the arms that held down his jerking fingers.

“He’s a fighter,” the person remarked. 

“All fighters are broken in the end, just like how even the fiercest of dogs can be brought to heel,” the other said. “Anyway, it looks promising how his vitals haven’t changed, even though the parasite is already halfway in.”

“Is this one the new and stronger prototype?”

“Indeed. With the other ones, reviving the test subjects was straightforward enough; with this one, it should be near impossible.”

“Why use it on him then? He is our longest investment.”

There was a pause, filled only with his own bloodcurling screams.

“He will survive.” Confidence was laced in every word of the man’s sentence. “He was already stronger than your average ten-year-old boy when he was brought in; the chemicals we have pumped into him have only exacerbated that fact. Not to mention that his body was already rejecting even the earlier prototypes, while the rest of the test subjects merely succumbed to it. Like you said, he’s a fighter.”

He didn’t hear the rest of their words as agony, more intense than anything he had ever felt before, ripped through the very marrow of his soul and scorched his heart bare. 

Chuuya heaved a panicked gasp, wincing as the seatbelt dug into his neck. He rubbed at his skull, feeling the memories of the dream dissipating like dandelion seeds, never to be seen again. There was a vague feeling that it wasn’t the first time such a vision had passed through his mind, but he couldn’t be sure. 

“Where are we?” he asked Dazai instead, refusing to dwell on it further. 

“Along the coast of Yokohama,” the other boy replied. “Good dreams?”

“Never,” Chuuya muttered, staring out the window. The sea glittered in front of him, lit up glittering indigo by the light of the moon and the cloak of night. In the distance stars twinkled fondly at him; he had always liked looking upon them. 

“Fair enough.” Dazai rolled down the windows; Chuuya stuck out his fingers, feeling a faint breeze caress his skin. “We’re heading to an old hiding spot of mine; my father has a holiday house here, so I’m quite familiar with the place.”

“Who is your father? People at the school are normally eager to brag about their families, but you have never been one of them. I told you about my parents, so it’s only fair that you do the same.”

“This is not a zero-sum game, Chuuya,” Dazai said. “I have no such obligation.”

“You killed Murase,” he said mildly. “Tell me who your father is.”

“Murase has nothing to do with this,” Dazai retorted, frowning. 

He shrugged noncommittedly. “Perhaps not. Tell me who your father is. A truth for a truth.”

Exhaling, Dazai turned his face away from Chuuya’s unrelenting stare. “Fine. My father is Genemon Tsushima.”

Chuuya raised his eyebrows. “The politician?”

“The very same,” Dazai said, attempting a light tone that turned heavy. 

“So why isn’t your name Tsushima Osamu?”

“You’ve run out of truths to trade, chibi. Tell me another of yours first.”

“I’ll have to consider it,” he hummed, pushing his hair back as the wind turned heavy and whipped it into his face. Dazai closed the window.

The car pulled into a dark alleyway; Dazai got out first and opened Chuuya’s door for him mockingly. “Slugs first.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said instinctively. “What is this place?”

It appeared to be a restaurant or a bar of sorts, situated underneath an apartment building. A set of stairs led down to the heavy oak door, lit up by a warm lamp. Just above, a faded sign showed a monocled man with a top hat and a microphone in his hands. 

“Bar Lupin,” Dazai said. “The best place on earth.”

***

One Week Ago

“This is… incredibly detailed,” Odasaku said, flipping through Edogawa’s journal. 

“It’s also incredibly illegible.” Ango sighed, plucking the thick leather-bound book from his fingers and setting it down on a nearby shelf in their conference room. “Are we sure that he didn’t keep any digital records? Those might be easier to read.”

“I already asked Fukuchi-san about that, but he said that despite his intelligence, Edogawa-san was infamously terrible at navigating modern machinery. Apparently he didn’t even know how to take public transport by himself!"

Ango almost spat out his coffee. “What? Then are you sure he knew how to read or write? What if none of this is in Japanese at all? It could just be gibberish, for all we know.”

He paused, recalling the scribbles upon the pages. Some of those lines had appeared to be more like symbols than actual words. 

But maybe… maybe they were symbols after all. For an alleged genius like Edogawa Ranpo, surely creating a code of sorts would’ve been no trouble at all?

Snatching the journal from where he’d left it, Ango opened it to the first page. This was the one that had caught his eye the first time he’d flipped through — there was only a single sequence written upon the paper. Now, examining it more carefully, what he had missed before now stood out with glaring clarity. 

Simplified Chinese was similar to Japanese — there were a lot of common symbols and words. Traditional Chinese, not so much; but Ango had studied it in high school out of pure interest, and his knowledge was sufficient in this case. 

The three words rearranged themselves into quite an obvious meaning: ‘ping hai tan’, meaning ‘flat beach’, in Chinese. 

If you looked at it sideways and sprinkled on a little bit of overthinking— well, maybe he’s grasping at straws here but ‘flat’ is the same as ‘horizontal’, right? So those two words mean ‘horizontal beach’; and here in Japan, there was one city whose name was derived from those two words. 

Yokohama. 

Ango informed Odasaku of his epiphany. The other man tilted his head, before nodding in agreement. 

“Edogawa Ranpo, by all sources, was born and raised here in Tokyo. Therefore, this isn’t an address,” Ango said, his brain working faster than his mouth. “Why would he mention Yokohama, if not in direct relation to the case he was investigating? And so in that case, the question becomes, what’s so special about Yokohama?”

“You know, now that we’re on this topic I do recall seeing two other pages that were in a similar style to this,” Oda said pensively. He took the book from Ango and flipped to roughly a third of the way through, pointing down at the paper. “See?”

Similar to the first page, this one also has one sequence of symbols written upon it, directly in the middle. This time, it is much easier to translate. 

“Azalea,” he said out loud, tracing the English letters. “And this one says ‘camellia’.”

“Kawasaki City,” the other man said immediately. “Those are its representative flower and tree, respectively. Do you think the last page will also point to a city?”

“Only one way to find out,” Ango replied as Oda flipped to the final point about two-thirds of the way in. 

The next symbol was so obvious that he felt a sense of stupidity reverberate around his skull for not catching it earlier. It was two circles, one within the other, with six arrows extending out from the external one at equal placements. 

The emblem of Tokyo. 

And suddenly, the pattern became very, very clear. 

“These are the sites of Dostoevsky’s Labs, where he experimented on captured Japanese citizens,” he murmured, hardly daring to say it out loud. “The first was established in Yokohama, at the site of his invasion; then as his forces moved north, there was one in Kawasaki, and later, famously when the Japanese troops fell at the Battle of Harumi Port, he installed one in Tokyo.”

“Edogawa-san must’ve gone there, looking for clues. The notes that follow each of these pages are without a doubt the things that he discovered while there.”

“I do wonder why he put Yokohama first,” Ango mused. “He lived and worked in Tokyo, the same as us. Surely it would’ve been easier to start with the Tokyo facility, simply because of proximity.”

“Maybe he wanted to follow the same order as that of their creation. After all, it went ‘Yokohama-Kawasaki-Tokyo’, not ‘Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama’,” Oda suggested. “Whatever the case, I’m sure that there was some kind of rationale behind it. We should pay a visit to Yokohama soon.”

They brought up the idea to Fukuchi later, who agreed easily and told them to be ready in six days’ time. Meanwhile, the two of them headed their separate ways for a brief hiatus; both to return back to other projects they were working on, but also to gather their thoughts and steel their nerves. 

Then, seventeen hours before their departure, an abrupt announcement reached them in the form of Fukuzawa Yukichi. 

The phone slipped out of Fukuchi’s hand and cracked on the floor. 

“Sir?” Oda asked, letting go of his bags to pick it up. “What’s wrong?”

“Zombies,” he said dazedly. “It seems as if there is an infection of the undead in Yokohama.”

“The undead?” Ango exclaimed disbelievingly. “The same ones in movies? The ones that aren’t possibly real?”

“They are very real,” the older man said, taking his phone from Oda and scrolling to a photo that Fukuzawa had sent him; that of a horrific face, lacerated with some unknown thing from forehead to chin and yet still grinning manically. 

Ango flinched backwards at the gruesome sight, taking a deep breath to wrestle his feelings back under control. As soon as he succeeded in doing so, his mind began to tick again. 

“This is no coincidence,” he murmured. “A week after Dostoevsky’s escape and Natsume-san’s disappearance? It has to be orchestrated.”

“Undoubtedly,” Fukuchi said grimly. “There’s no proof behind it yet, but it’s for certain. Meanwhile, it has become far too dangerous for the two of you to go into there. Of course you’ll need to eventually, but at the moment we are woefully unprepared. I’ll give you a couple more weeks to gather the things you shall need, before we make another attempt. Spend some time trying to decode the rest of Edogawa’s journal; I understand that our codebreakers haven’t made any progress yet?”

“Unfortunately yes,” Odasaku said. “Maybe if they had a little longer. I don’t understand why this journal hasn’t already been looked at; it’s no hard thing to recognise that it’s written entirely in code.”

“Edogawa Ranpo was a student of Fukuzawa’s, a long time ago.” Mussing up his carefully gelled hair, Fukuchi sighed. “My old friend was devastated when the news came of his assassination. He held onto the journal for the longest time, unwilling to let go. I had to pull in a couple of favours to get my hands on it.”

Ango lowered his head in a show of respect. “Is his grave near here? Sakunosuke and I ought to pay him a visit.”

A wry smile played on Fukuchi’s lips. “He was cremated. Had his ashes scattered to the wind and all that. It’s just as well — when they found him, there was barely anything left to bury.”

***

Presently, 

Mori Ougai stood with his hands crossed behind his back at the very top of the building he owned, gazing down upon the masses of undead crawling through the streets with characteristic apathy.

This was an interesting development, but he was mostly unsurprised by it. Dostoevsky’s escape was bound to trigger some cataclysm such as this; he was disappointed that the Russian man was uncreative enough to copy Hollywood movies and cheap dramas instead of coming up with his own ideas. 

There was a knock on the door, and Mori called, “Come in.”

“Boss,” Ozaki Kouyou said, bowing. “We’ve cleared the infested floors of all the undead. The buildings owned by Mori Corporations are now completely safe and able to be used once more.”

“Death count?”

“Twenty-four,” the woman recited. “Four killed in action, nineteen turned into zombies and then killed. One was captured, as per your requests. Should we have Ace begin testing?”

“I’ll do the honours myself,” he said. “But at the moment, I have another mission for both your team and the Black Lizards.”

“Of course. We are at your service.”

“Some of the Day workers are still here, yes? The ones that are unaware of our more… covert operations?”

“Yes sir. I estimate there to be at least a couple hundred left, who have been unable to go home because of the current situation.”

“Give them a choice,” he instructed. “Either they can take their chances on the streets, or they can join the Night forces.”

Kouyou’s eyes widened. “You mean to incorporate them into the Port Mafia?”

“Naturally. Even a fool can see that these next few days will dampen our manpower. However, this is also the best opportunity we will get this decade; a chance to completely demolish our enemies and monopolise both legal and illegal dealings here in Yokohama, one of Japan’s largest port cities. The police and governments will have their hands full dealing with the outbreak, especially since I hear that there’s been sightings of zombies in both Kawasaki and Tokyo. This is our opportunity to seize ever more power.”

“That seems reasonable, sir,” the woman said. “Very well. I will carry out your orders.”

“As you should,” he said lightly. “In the next few days, we will carry out an expansive search for survivors and recruit most if not all of them. For now, you are dismissed.”

Bowing once more, Kouyou exited the room, leaving him to his musings. 

The beauty of the sea was a stark contrast to the carnage happening at his feet. To Mori, they were both things to admire. 

“Well, Natsume-san,” he said to the empty space. “I am doing as you wanted, aren’t I? Send Fukuzawa and Fukuchi to the light, and leave your best pupil to reign in the darkness. Alas, I am sick of having to hide. Power does not call to me the same way I know it calls to other corrupt men like myself, but I cannot deny that there is something appealing in its taste.”

After the conclusion of the Great War, he had been greatly disturbed to find that his hands often shook too much to operate on patients anymore. It had come as a punch to his ribs; he had never thought that the events of the war would affect him so greatly. 

Natsume approached him during his period of directionless wander with a proposal. 

The Port Mafia of Yokohama was easily one of Japan’s most powerful crime syndicates, wielding a large amount of influence over the economy and the government alike. Crucially, it had played a role in fighting back Dostoevsky’s forces when he invaded, almost driving them off before eventually falling. 

“Rule over them,” Natsume had said. “They are an unpolished weapon to be refined, and you are the only one able to do it. I do not trust Fukuzawa to have what it takes, and Fukuchi is too prominent in politics to vanish. You are purposeless at the moment, are you not?”

And so he agreed; and he had never regretted it since. 

The ping of his phone disturbed him from his thoughts. Fishing it out from his pocket, he checked the email that had slid into his inbox. 

From: Tsushima Genemon

My dear Mori-san, I do hope you’re doing well. Do you recall when I blocked the legislation that would have enforced policing on your ports? I write this email to you now to call in the favour that you owe me. 

It is said that the appearance of the zombies originated in Yokohama International School. I am not quite sure if you’re aware of this, but I have a son that goes there. His name is Tsushima Shuuji, although he insists, for some incomprehensible reason, on being called Dazai Osamu. 

I am quite certain that he is not yet dead. For some reason, despite his very best efforts, Death itself despises him with a peculiar passion; that is to say, he has an odd penchant for surviving even in the most dire of circumstances. 

I would like you to use your influence to look for him. I hardly recognise him as a child of mine, given he is the result of my wife’s affair, but he is the only viable heir I have at the moment. Bunji is still too young to continue the family legacy, after all. Yet even so, he will prove valuable in political marriages and that sort; although he is a bastard, he (perhaps regretfully) still does carry Tsushima blood, if only in spirit. 

Please look at the image attached to identify him. I look forward to hearing good news soon.

Mori clicked on the photograph, studying the young boy that appeared in front of him. Pale skin, burgundy hair and large, soulless eyes; he was, in some ways, a spitting reflection of his father, even if he technically did not share any blood with the man. There was something in the curve of his lips that reminded him very much of Genemon’s own casual cunning. 

Very well, he typed, and then clicked the phone shut. 

“Dazai Osamu,” he said out loud. “I’m coming for you.”

***

The news of the zombie infection that had spread through Japan’s west coast reached the ears of the French with some trepidation. If this was some kind of revenge plot by Dostoevsky to get back at the nation that imprisoned him, France would very much be next on his list. 

Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, however, had different concerns. 

The safety of their country was worth worrying about, of course, but what made them more anxious was the fact that Chuuya was no longer answering his phone. 

“Do you think he’s alright?” Arthur said, drumming his hand nervously upon his leg. 

“Of course,” Paul reassured him. “Our Chuuya would never die so easily. We’ve trained him well. His device probably just ran out of battery.”

Arthur got up and started pacing the length of the room. “We have to leave, and we have to leave now. I know we agreed to wait a couple of days and give ourselves time to prepare, but we are in a race against the ticking clock at the moment. The more seconds pass that we don’t hear from Chuuya, the more anxious I feel.”

“Permission hasn’t arrived from base yet,” Paul reminded his husband. “If we act without it, we could get in a massive amount of trouble.”

Throwing his hands up, the black-haired man sank back down onto the couch with frustration written all over his face. 

“So what?” he declared. “Who cares if they fire us? I’d like to see them try. This is Chuuya we’re talking about, Chuuya, our son!”

A tiny bit of agitation leaked into Paul's voice as he said, “I know that, obviously! You have no idea how much this pains me as well. But we cannot just leave— ”

“Ah, but perhaps we can,” Arthur interrupted, scooting so that they were barely centimeters apart. He brushed a faint kiss upon Paul’s lips. “We are France’s most notorious spies, remember? Our connections go far and wide. It will not be simple, that is certain, but it is not impossible either for us to make the journey ourselves, even without help from the Transcendents.”

Paul smirked, and for the first time, Arthur felt as if the two of them were on the same page.”

“Very well,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The two of them clasped hands, grinning foolishly. It had been a long time since they had a mission like this; the Transcendents seemed to consider them practically retired, even though they were still much more skilled than the younger recruits even in their early forties. 

“Chuuya,” Arthur declared. “We’re coming for you.”

Chapter Text

Chuuya blinked against the warm amber lights, shielding his eyes. He wasn’t sure what he had expected from a place that Dazai so obviously loved, but the comfortable atmosphere exceeded his expectations. 

He had noticed during his exit from the car that the restaurants and apartments surrounding Lupin were all abandoned, with broken windows and cracked doors. However, the bar itself seemed perfectly put-together; there was even a bartender behind the counter, an old man who dipped his head to them respectfully as they walked in. 

“Dazai-san,” he said. “And who’s this with you?”

“This is Chuuya,” Dazai replied, skipping up to him. “Hi there, Tatsuhiko-san! How are you?”

“As good enough as can be in such unique circumstances,” Tatsuhiko replied. “Shall I take your order?”

“A cup of bleach please!” he chirped, taking a seat on one of the stools. Chuuya followed suit, leaving a gap between the two of them. 

The bartender ignored his request and turned straight to Chuuya. “What about you, sir?”

“Uhh… coke, please,” he said, chuckling slightly at Dazai’s splutters.

“Hey!” the other boy complained. “I exist too!”

“With ice?” Tatsuhiko asked, still selectively deaf. 

“That would be good,” Chuuya answered, raising his voice over Dazai’s whining. 

Spinning around, the old man turned to scan the shelves. “Ah, looks like I’ve been far too accustomed to receiving far less innocent orders. But not to worry, young sir; I know there are some cans out in the back.”

Chuuya nodded mutely, watching the figure of Tatsuhiko retreat into a storeroom. After making sure the old man was out of earshot, he turned to Dazai, raising an eyebrow. “So, why did we come here?”

“You’re not going to ask about the bleach?” 

“Oh please, it’s just another attempt to take your own life,” Chuuya argued. “And it’s not even a righteous one this time — didn’t you say a couple of days ago that you wanted to try living? Don’t go back on your word now, Mackerel.”

“What would you do if I did?”

“I’d travel into the afterlife and drag you out of it just to kill you again,” he replied calmly. “Now answer my question. Why this place of all places?”

Dazai’s gaze flickered towards something far away. “Like I said before, my father has a holiday house here in Yokohama. It’s only two streets away, actually. I would come here when he entertained guests and didn’t want me around getting underfoot.”

“You would come to a bar ? How old would you have been then? Younger than sixteen, that’s for sure. The legal age to consume alcohol is twenty, y’know?”

“Of course I know,” the other boy said dismissively, cracking a strange smile. “But neither my father nor I feel as if we have much obligation to the law; that’s one thing we have in common, out of all the things we don’t.”

“So you mean—” Chuuya tried to say. 

“No, don’t be ridiculous,” Dazai cut him off. “I did, but never here. Tatsuhiko-san wouldn’t let me. Most of the time, I just sat and talked to him as he served customers.”

Interlacing his fingers, Dazai propped his head down upon them and did not look at Chuuya. “I apologise. It may have been a risky move, but I had to come here first. I needed to see if it was alright."

Chuuya sighed and prodded him sharply. “Don’t get moody on me now. It’s fine; this doesn’t seem like a bad place to stay anyway. The door’s reinforced, and it is mostly underground, so zombies will have a hell of a time getting in.”

At that moment, Tatsuhiko returned from the storeroom. In one hand he held a glass of coke, which he passed to Chuuya. In the other was an opalescent liquid; it made Dazai’s features light up momentarily, before the old man set it down and said simply, “Lemonade.”

After a few moments of comfortable silence disturbed only by the slurping of drinks, Tatsuhiko spoke. “How did you two manage to escape the zombies?”

“Chuuya knows martial arts,” Dazai said. “And we were lucky; the two of us were out on the roof when the infection occured.”

“Doing what?” the old man asked, pursing his lips. “Don’t tell me—”

“Not this time,” the Mackerel cut in, a warning in his eyes. 

“Some guy beat him up,” Chuuya interjected casually, picking at his nails. “I went after him.”

Inexplicably, Tatsuhiko’s wary expression softened. “That’s kind of you, Chuuya-san. I’m glad that someone is looking out for him.”

Flushing, Chuuya muttered, “That’s not— well, sure, I suppose. What about you, old man? You must’ve interacted with at least one of the undead to know about this situation.”

“A couple of them crawled into my bar,” he said, pointing to the trail of red stemming from the door that the two of them had failed to notice before. “I kicked them straight out, of course.”

Chuuya raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Nice job.”

“I’m sure you’ve done more, especially while protecting Dazai-san.” 

He glanced over at Dazai, expecting the bandage-waster to make a quip. Instead, he stayed eerily quiet, a thoughtful frown on his face. 

“Hey old man,” he said suddenly. “Why don’t you spit out what you’ve been wanting to ask me?”

Tatsuhiko blinked, evidently startled, before a forlorn smile stretched over his cracked lips. “Observant as ever, I see. In that case, I’ve been meaning to ask, how do you commit suicide?”

Ice seemed to spread over Dazai’s body, glacial hues tinging his cheeks and frosting over his eyes. 

“What?” he croaked, fingers twitching as they dug into his palms until roses bloomed on skin. Noticing, Chuuya scooted nearer and gripped Dazai’s wrists tightly until he let go. 

“I knew it was wrong to burden you with an old man’s desires,” Tatsuhiko muttered. “You should forget I said anything, young sir.”

“No, I will not!” Dazai said hotly, showing more emotion than Chuuya had ever seen before. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Why do you even care? he wondered. You don’t even have such regard for your own life, so what makes you value his?

“I am not young anymore, Dazai-kun,” Tatsuhiko said, sounding more exhausted than anything else. “I cannot picture myself running from the undead forever — scavenging food when the store in here runs out, decapitating my once-kin. And yet, becoming one of them sounds far worse.”

His hand slipped inside his waistcoat, drawing out a sleek handgun. “I knew you would come here, eventually, if you were still alive. You are perhaps the only person whose affection for this bar rivals or maybe even supersedes my own. I feel comforted leaving it in your hands.”

Twirling the weapon in his fingers, he pressed it into Dazai’s chest, then let go. Dazai watched it clatter to the ground dispassionately. “Your father calls you a coward for constantly trying to find the easy way out — death, that is. I used to agree with him, did you know that? But I don’t anymore; I have now realised that I am the coward because I cannot bring myself to do the deed. So, Dazai Osamu, will you do the honours?”

Scorching rage tore through Chuuya’s throat with such intensity that he felt breathless. He slammed his fists down on the table and stood up. 

“You cannot ,” he snarled, staring the old man down. “Why would you put such a burden —”

“Shut up, chibi,” Dazai hissed, bending down to pick up the gun. 

“You shut up,” Chuuya retorted instantly, kicking Dazai’s exposed back. “Surely you wouldn’t really—”

“And why wouldn’t I?” the other boy interrupted. Chuuya recoiled at the glint in his eye, one that was almost not quite human. “Who am I to deny him?”

His grip around the gun tightened. “Come on, old man. Let’s get this over with.”

Indecision warred briefly on Tatsuhiko’s countenance, but he exhaled and followed Dazai to a different room. Chuuya let his head drop to the polished wood of the counter, ignoring the dull pain that ricocheted through him at the gesture. He considered covering his ears, but decided not to. 

The bang that echoed through the rooms was muffled but unambivalent. The first emotion he felt was relief — it was clear that they had a silencer, meaning that zombies nearby would not be drawn to them. Then immediately there was guilt bubbling in his gut at that morbid relief, but soon enough he felt almost nothing at all. 

And why should he? He hadn’t known the bartender, not in the same way that Dazai evidently had. They barely even said two words to each other; he did not have any responsibility to grieve the man’s demise. 

Then Dazai walked back in and anger was ringing in Chuuya’s ears once more. He kicked back the stool, letting it clatter to the floor, and strided over to clasp Dazai’s shirt in his fists, pulling him in closer. 

Dazai went duly limp in his clutches, averting his gaze. There was a fleck of blood underneath his eye; Chuuya smeared it over the rest of his face with one sleeve.

“You actually killed him,” he said incredulously, shaking the other boy up and down. “I don’t believe it! At this rate, you’ve killed more humans than zombies! Why would you do that? Was he not your friend?”

“Chibi wouldn’t understand,” Dazai muttered. 

“So make me,” Chuuya demanded. “Make me, Dazai. Let’s trade a truth for a truth again; what makes you think a life is so worthless?”

“I’ll be kind and point out that this isn’t a viable truth to trade because I’ve already answered that question, and it’s not my problem if you don’t remember.”

“I do remember,” he said. “You said that you didn’t fit right in this world, and that you were born to die. But that isn’t a good enough explanation for me, Mackerel. A life is… it’s priceless, so I don’t understand why—”

Dazai’s head was still tilted away from him. Chuuya seized his chin with his right hand and pulled it towards him. 

The words that had been about to burst from his throat died as he took in Dazai’s expression: glassy eyes, colourless cheeks, debilitating lethargy present in every slope and arch of his features.

Releasing his hold on Dazai’s shirt, Chuuya stepped back, tugging at his hair. Dazai took the respite to look away again. 

They stood there for what felt like centuries, before Chuuya huffed with exasperation and grabbed Dazai’s forearm. 

“Come on,” he said, when the other boy refused to move. “Can I show you something?”

Dazai’s lips twitched, the only sign he gave that he had heard Chuuya’s words, before wordlessly acquiescing. Chuuya grabbed his katanas from where he had left them leaning near the entrance of the bar, before shoving the door open. 

A cool zephyr whisked across them lightly before darting away. Chuuya cautiously closed it behind them, before leading Dazai to the fire escape that twisted around the buildings above the bar like a rusted ladder to the sky. He undid part of the bandages around Dazai’s wrists and tied it to his own, and then began to climb. 

Seconds later, Dazai followed. 

They clambered up the frigid green steps, stepping higher and higher, resisting the urge to look down before eventually reaching the roof. 

Chuuya stepped out onto it first, then held out a hand to Dazai who ignored it and made his own way there. 

“What’s the purpose of this, chibi?” the other boy asked quietly. 

“It’s nostalgic, don’t you think?” Chuuya responded, tilting his head up to the sable firmament. “Here we are, on a roof again.”

Dazai said nothing. Exhaling, Chuuya held his sleeve and led him to the center of the room. “Look up, Mackerel. Do you see the stars?”

“They’re pretty hard to miss,” Dazai said, mustering up some of his characteristic sarcasm. 

But really, he was right in this instance. It was an unusually clear night, without a cloud in sight to dim the glow of the moon and her diamond-like companions. Chuuya inhaled the crisp air, a sense of tranquility settling over him.

“Here’s a truth for you, Mackerel: I don’t remember any of my life before I was ten. It’s the strangest thing — I knew how to read and write Japanese and how to solve simple math equations, but I couldn’t recall the faces of my biological parents. My earliest memory is waking up in Paul’s guest room.”

This wasn’t something he had ever told anyone before, but something about the crease of Dazai’s contemplative visage made him continue. “They told me that it was dissociative amnesia, memory loss caused by some kind of trauma. It would give me horrible headaches all the time, and when it did, Paul would always tell me to look at the stars.”

He sat down cross-legged on the cement, gesturing for Dazai to follow. Without waiting to see the other boy’s reaction he laid down upon it, pillowing his head on his hands as he beheld the vast sky. He heard a thump beside him as Dazai too sprawled down on the floor. It was enough encouragement to continue.

“Paul said that stars represent hope,” he said. “Do you know how stars are made, Dazai?”

“I do, but I’ll grant you the honour of explaining it to me the way your father explained it to you.”

Chuuya snorted, smiling despite himself. “They’re born within giant clouds of dust and gas known as nebulae. As gravity causes the nebulae to collapse, the compressed material heats up; at a high enough temperature, hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium, and thus the star is born. The denser, hotter stars have shorter lives; they explode into supernovae, which are always fascinating to study. The cooler ones live longer, becoming white dwarfs.”

“It almost seems as if you’re encouraging suicide,” Dazai observed. “It’s like you said; the stars with shorter lives go out far more beautifully.”

“You miss the point,” he scoffed. “The stars aren’t sabotaging their own existence. Their entire life is spent always trying to burn hotter; they fuse and fuse and fuse until they can contain it no longer. And then at that point they ‘die’ but even when that happens they still exist for millions and millions of years.”

“Maybe I’m stupid, or maybe you’re just not that good with metaphors, but I don’t understand what you’re getting at here.”

“Aren’t you a specialist in humanities?” Chuuya huffed. “My point is, from the moment of their birth a star is given a particular fate; to either burn hot and short or cool and long. That destiny of theirs is not able to be changed, but even so they bravely work through it, completing their tasks earnestly. And eventually, when they do die, they are rewarded for their hard work by becoming eternal — the dust of supernovas form nebulae that create new stars, and white dwarfs also exist for a notoriously long time.”

He breathed in deeply. “It’s the same for us, Mackerel. We may not be able to change whatever lies at the end of the road for us, but that doesn’t mean we should not endure through existence while we can. After all, it is these brief moments of when we are living that will make our eventual death all the more beautiful.”

Even time was suspended in that moment as Dazai processed Chuuya’s words, the space around them made soundless by the weight of his thoughts. Seconds ticked by, then minutes. 

“I’m sorry for killing Murase,” he whispered, so soft that Chuuya had to strain to hear. “Even though I can’t understand why, I know he meant something to you.”

“He reminded me of the things I already knew — that humans are good inside,” Chuuya replied. “But never mind that. I’m sorry that Tatsuhiko-san forced your hand. Murase-san meant something to me, but that bartender probably meant more to you.”

“He was a shelter from the things I already knew,” Dazai said, parroting Chuuya’s words back at him. “Shelters, however, are temporary. I was fully aware of that, and yet I still allowed myself to get far too attached.”

Chuuya groped around in the dark until he found Dazai’s outstretched hand, and linked their fingers together. They were trembling faintly under his touch, because of the cold or exhaustion or grief or something else, he did not know. 

“Let’s stay here for a little while longer,” the brunette murmured. “If I go back there right now, it will smell entirely too much like blood even though I got rid of the body.”

Some part of him wanted to ask where Dazai could’ve possibly hidden a corpse, but Chuuya pushed that aside for later and hummed his agreement. 

“Okay.”

***

Day 5 - 25th May, 2021:

“We might be better off doing this in the night instead of early morning,” Arthur said anxiously, tugging on his scarf. 

“But no one expects an attack at this time of day,” Paul countered. “And besides, it’s not so strange for the two of us to be walking around in the morning; that’s not so true if it’s night.”

“I know, I know,” the other man sighed as they regarded the sprawling buildings of France’s espionage department from their perch on the rooftop. “We’ve gone through this before.”

“So let’s not doubt ourselves now,” he said, grinning. “Doesn’t this feel good? We haven’t been on a proper mission for so long.”

Arthur chuckled and adjusted his hat. “I suppose so. There is nothing quite like this. The main difference is that we’re betraying our country right now.”

“This was your idea, don’t get cold feet on me now!” Paul teased. “Besides, this is not a real betrayal, since we’re not actively harming France by going to Yokohama. We’re only going to rescue Chuuya.”

Before Arthur could reply, a series of tolling bells rang out through the courtyard. The two of them stiffened, before exchanging a look and sliding off the roof to land gracefully on their feet in the alley below.

“And so the work day begins,” Arthur murmured as they melted into the shadows. Seconds later, the clatter of footsteps reached them as agents began stepping out of their vehicles and making their way to their respective offices. Once the primary rush was over, the two of them snuck along the darkest corners until they reached the designated airfield created purely for the purpose of the Transcendents, France’s squad of their most elite spies. 

Poking the fence, Paul exhaled and said, “How long until Victor arrives?”

“Two minutes, possibly less,” his husband replied, checking his watch. 

“Are you sure we need him to get in? Let’s just hop the fence and get this over with.”

“Yeah, but then where would we find the key to kickstart the ignition? They took ours away when they ‘retired’ us, remember?”

“I pretend not to,” Paul grumbled. “The audacity to do that! My legs still work, even at forty.”

“Paul Verlaine! Complaining about your departure again, I see.” They swivelled around at the voice, feigning shock as if they hadn’t heard his footsteps coming from a mile away. 

“Oh, if it isn’t Victor Hugo,” he said, slapping the man on the back. “Why would they keep you in and lock me out? I am far better than you.”

“Possibly because I don’t have grey hairs,” Victor snarked, laughing heartily. “What brings the two of you here?”

Paul felt the faintest of fingers trace the small of his back. Let me handle this, Arthur was signalling. He tipped his head to the side, just barely. Sure. 

“Hugo, did you hear about the absolute catastrophe in Japan?” he asked casually — too casually, Paul thought; but then again both of them had barely passed the acting part of spy training.

Victor furrowed his brow for a second, before his face lit up with realisation as he said, “Oh, you mean the whole zombie thing?”

“Yup, the one that started in Yokohama ,” Arthur emphasised. 

Briefly, Paul dwelled on the oddness of that statement — but then it clicked into place for him. Days ago, Arthur had gone to their former boss, William Shakespeare, with a plea for him to authorise their entry into Yokohama in an attempt to rescue Chuuya. The melodramatic performance he had put on then was one of his finest, probably because it wasn’t entirely faked. 

And as Victor let out a horrified gasp and whispered, “Wait, isn’t your son going to school there?”, Paul knew he had fallen straight into Arthur’s trap. 

His husband glanced down sorrowfully, pushing obsidian hair back from his face so that the tension and conflict carved into his countenance was clear. “It’s awful. We managed to get in contact with him briefly, but we’ve completely lost touch. I asked William to let us go to him, but he completely refused!”

Victor’s eyes narrowed and he inhaled sharply through his teeth. “Let me guess: you want me to help you?”

“Will you?” Arthur asked, his voice deceptively calm. 

Worrying his bottom lip, Victor looked at them apologetically and Paul felt his heart sink and his emotions quench themselves at what was about to become inevitable. 

On three , Arthur signalled, his hand twisting into symbols where Victor couldn’t see. 

“If Mr. Shakespeare refused, he must’ve had good reason,” the man blabbered. “You’re two of our best and most reputable agents, it would be a massive—”

One.

“—pain to lose you, I mean think—”

Two.

“—of the outcry from the public, the backlash we’d face, and besides, I’m sure—”

Three. 

“— your son would be able to stay alive—”

His final sentence ended in a shriek as both Arthur and Paul lunged towards him at once, cutting off his words by stuffing a napkin into his mouth and pressing a blade to his jugular. 

To his credit, Victor put up a good fight; he lashed out forcefully, catching Paul in the stomach with a blow that knocked the air from his lungs. But that wouldn’t be enough for him to loosen his grip — the hundreds of missions he had completed built him a pain tolerance that was higher than the Eiffel Tower. 

Pinning the taller man in place, Paul gestured to Arthur who carefully executed a precise hit to the back of his neck, effectively rendering him unconscious. He placed Victor gently on the floor, leaning him against the fence. 

“Sorry, old friend,” he murmured, retrieving the keys that would unlock any of the helicopters parked in the airfield. “The day your wife gives birth, you’ll understand how the two of us feel.”

He straightened just as the alarms began to ring, courtesy of the team that kept watch using security cameras alerting the entire encampment to their aircraft heist. Paul found the nearest one and shot it a dazzling smile, before retrieving a gun from his belt and putting a bullet through the blinking red lens. 

“Let’s go,” he said as the glass fell. 

Arthur nodded wordlessly, and the two of them clambered up the chain-link fence and strategically placed barbed wire with no trouble at all, and began sprinting for the nearest helicopter. Behind them, he heard the clicking of raised guns, and raised an eyebrow, impressed. 

The security system had gotten much faster since their exit; or perhaps because of their exit. 

“Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, freeze right there!” the captain of the guard shouted through a microphone. “We will not hesitate to open fire.”

Yes, you will , he thought. Would William Shakespeare really risk killing the darlings of post-war society? The heroes that had rescued thousands from torture and imminent death?

No, of course not. 

So, they would hesitate. But he wouldn’t. 

As the first of the agents rushed towards them, he lifted his gun and fired at their feet, leaving precise smoking holes in the asphalt. A couple centimeters further along and their legs would have been blown off before there was even time to register what was happening. 

“You missed,” the captain called. 

“No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

Arthur unlocked the helicopter quickly, and gestured for him to get inside.

“You will be deemed traitors, Verlaine. Is this what you want?”

“Traitors betray their countries, my dear captain,” he replied, not bothering to hide his scoff. “We are no traitors. We are just parents.”

“Tell Shakespeare not to bother to stop us,” Arthur added, turning his head. “Combat was always his weakness; he was better with strategy. And we’ll be back before you know it, safe and sound.”

The captain exhaled, lowering his gun.

“Do as you wish,” he muttered, beckoning for the other soldiers to follow him. “But as you do so, at least try to remember the qualities that made you guys heroes in the War.”

“We would do nothing less,” Arthur responded — disgustingly, it sounded as if he meant it. Personally, Paul wouldn’t mind wiping out half of Yokohama or even of Japan if it led to Chuuya’s rescue.

The helicopter lifted into the sky with an overwhelmingly loud rumble; this was one part of the vehicle that he had never gotten used to. His husband clutched the wheel, his knuckles turning a shade paler where they met the polyurethane. 

“You know,” he said after a brief pause, “any probability that they would’ve allowed us to return to the Transcendents is gone after this.”

Paul dismissed that statement with a toss of his chin. “Yeah, like they were going to let us anyway. You’re tipping too far north, Arthur. Eastward and onward we go!”

Arthur laughed, a bright clear sound that he rarely heard. “Onwards we go.”

***

The zombie thrashed in its restraints as Ozaki Kouyou approached, baring teeth and sending spittle flying. 

“I would kill you, if I could,” she told it dispassionately. “You may have been human once, but now you are merely a menace to society. Unfortunately, you are to suffer a worse fate at the hands of Mori.”

“That’s awfully cruel, Kouyou-san,” Mori hummed from the doorway. “Give my area of expertise some credit, would you?”

“I hope it breaks out, attacks you, and in doing so gives me an excuse to cut the head from its body,” she said to him humourlessly. Mori smiled regardless. 

“Protecting the boss is a valiant mission,” he replied. “However, in this instance, I am fully capable of handling myself. You have duties elsewhere, yes?”

She frowned, caught off guard. “Yes, but—”

He flapped one hand at her. “Go, then.”

Bowing, she turned on her heel. “As you wish, Boss.”

She palmed the handle of the katana strapped to her hips as she did so. Leaving Mori with that abomination inspired a sense of unease; on one hand, perhaps it would kill him, and that would be a fairly optimal outcome. On the other hand, it would just create a Mori-zombie, which would undoubtedly be even more annoying to reckon with than a Mori-human.

Oh dear, the struggles of contemplating your Boss’ death. Not that she would actually kill him; as much as she despised the Port Mafia and all it stood for, it was undeniable that even so she was—

Attachment was the wrong word. She searched for a better one but couldn’t find it before Hirotsu found her. 

“Hirotsu-san,” she greeted. “I was just about to visit our warehouses along the coast. Do you want me for any particular reason?”

“Just the usual,” the old man said, adjusting his monocle. “A gang of survivors have emerged and taken over the Western building.”

She squinted at him. “How?”

“That one’s the one assigned to the Day workers to guard. They accepted bribes.”

“And I suppose I’m to make an example of them?”

Wincing, Hirotsu slipped a gun from one of the many holsters strapped to his body and handed it to her. She held it with some distaste. “An example is too kind a word. I know you dislike firearms, but take it for safety, in case they also have some in their possession. After all, not even you can slice through bullets.”

“You would be surprised,” she told him offhandedly. “Why can’t your Black Lizards do it?”

Hirotsu pulled a face. “Effective examples need your… flair. My Lizards only know violence. They will be there afterwards to clear out the intruding gang.”

“Well then,” she said. “Take me there.”

They got into Hirotsu’s car, a sleek Mercedes-Benz of a newer model than you would expect a man of his age to prefer. Kouyou propped her cheek on her hand and gazed out the window as they drove. 

Yokohama, despite its sophistication as a city, had never been the neatest place — but that was something she liked about it, the sprawling towers and crooked trees. 

Five days after the initial infection, it wasn’t charmingly disorganised anymore — it was lifeless. 

Is this what it means to be in an apocalypse ? she thought, and then didn’t ponder it more. The word apocalypse, to an extent, implied an extended period of time that had the potential to stretch an unforeseeable amount of years into the future. 

As a general principle, she tried not to think too much of what lay beyond the present. It was one that as a child she had fancied, but it served no use in Japan’s largest crime syndicate. 

Looking into the past was similarly useless. What was the point of looking towards foregones? If she thought too hard on it she would—

“We’re here,” Hirotsu announced, stopping the car beside the Western building. Almost instantly a trio of zombies descended upon them; he rolled the window down and casually planted six bullets in their eyes. They fell cacophonously on the ground, screeching in their blindness. 

“It really is a testament to how incompetent the average person is that they couldn’t beat these numbskulls,” Kouyou said, shooting the corpses with a glare of disgust. She got out of the vehicle and strolled up the marble steps to the entrance of the building. 

“Come out!” she called to the intruders that no doubt hid within. “Although your capacity to survive is impressive, you are encroaching on Port Mafia land.”

A bullet grazed the shell of her ear and landed somewhere in the distance. Kouyou did not flinch. 

“Surely you’ve heard of us?” She pushed open the glass doors and let herself in, sidestepping the next bullet. “We did hide in the shadows a lot more before this whole apocalypse thing, but not so much that the streets neither knew nor whispered our name.”

There was silence. Slightly ahead, she caught the glint of a sniper rifle. 

“There you are,” Kouyou said. A flick of her wrist sent one of the small daggers in her sleeve plunging towards the man; there was a visceral noise, a pained groan, and a silhouette that fell from rafters. 

She drew her sword with a flourish and levelled it at the traitors she knew were hiding in the near vicinity. “I’ll say it one more time: come out, you filthy maggots. Do not continue to tread on my patience.”

A pause. 

Then the shouts of common men deluding themselves of their own valour erupted as they rushed at her all at once, holding kitchen knives and broomsticks and the occasional handgun. She killed those first, fighting back a maniacal smile, and picked up the firearms where they had been dropped. Those would add to the Mafia’s ever expanding weaponry. 

The rest of the survivors began to retreat beneath the weight of her flashing blade; some turned to flee, but before the rest could follow, Kouyou stepped in front of them and blocked off the exit. 

“Do not follow,” she said, her voice so deceptively soft it could almost pass as friendly. And yet, no matter how much a cougar purrs, rabbits would do well to remember that it was still a predator. “Those people are walking straight into a trap; the Mafia’s men are blocking all usable exits.”

The rest of them exchanged panicked looks, but wisely stayed still. 

“Tell me where the men you bribed are,” Kouyou urged them pleasantly. “If you do that, I’ll let you walk away with your lives.”

“They— they left,” one of them blubbered, so close to tears it was honestly painful to watch. “After they let us in, they fled like hell was on their heels; to be fair, maybe it was.”

“Where did they go?”

“I’m not sure… but— but this was only an hour or so ago, I’m sure you could catch up with them! They didn’t have a car, they were on foot, they couldn’t have gotten too far. I think—”

Kouyou was tired of the endless chattering. She shot him between the eyes and watched, expressionless, as his body crumpled to the floor. 

“How very wicked, Kouyou-san,” came Hirotsu’s wry voice from the entrance. “I thought you said that you would spare their lives.”

“Don’t grow morals on me now, old man,” she quipped, watching with one raised eyebrow as the rest of the survivors cowered underneath her gaze, powerless anger on their faces. 

A Black Lizard entered, dipping his head to her. “Shall I deal with these?”

“Make them swear an oath to the Mafia. If they agree, keep them alive and put them to work.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Hirotsu came to her side as the prisoners were herded away. Kouyou dug around in the deep pockets of her kimono and handed him the guns she had pilfered from the corpses. “Here, spoils of war.”

“It was hardly a war,” he said, examining each one carefully. “More like a massacre.”

Kouyou rolled her eyes and picked at her manicure. “Let’s not be so dramatic.”

The old man opened his mouth, but then shut it abruptly as his eyes narrowed. Glancing towards him, she realised that he was fixated on the gun in his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“This is a Department gun,” Hirotsu said. “It’s the standard one issued to all the spies under the command of Fukuchi Ouchi. Which body did you take this from?”

Kouyou glanced back at the mangled figures scattered on the floor. “I’m not sure. Are you certain about this? None of the men I fought had the skill of a Department-trained agent.”

“Perhaps it was a low-level worker; or perhaps he wanted to avoid arousing our suspicion.”

“Should’ve ditched the gun then,” she muttered. 

“Whatever the case, the conclusion is the same. The government is keeping an eye on us. We should report this to the Boss immediately.”

Shrugging, Kouyou followed him as he made his way back to the car. “The Department is always keeping an eye on us. This is no special circumstance.”

“You’re probably right, but better safe than sorry,” he said. 

“I suppose so.”

***

The initial discovery of the undead in Yokohama had turned the nation into a bubbling cauldron of panic and irrationality. A day later, it was reported that the infection had spread to both Kawasaki and Tokyo, and the fire burned brighter. 

Now, gazing down at the deserted streets from a tower in the middle of who-knows-where that the government decided to move all their special agents to in the interest of their safety, Ango considered jumping off. 

“Don’t do it,” Odasaku said pleasantly from behind him. 

“Gods, you scared me,” he said, biting back a shriek. “I didn’t know you could walk so quietly.”

“It’s the spy training; they had a whole seminar on that, remember?”

“I don’t, actually.” He returned the wry smile that Oda gave him, and stared down at his hands. “It’s upsetting that the mission has been delayed. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t let us continue."

“It might’ve escaped your notice, Ango-kun, but there is an infestation of zombies taking over Japan,” Oda teased. “Is it so surprising that the Department wants all their agents to focus on one mission at a time?”

“Our mission could potentially solve this problem though,” he pointed out. “The zombies definitely have something to do with Dostoevsky, and so does the investigation. It seems strategic to continue it, in the hopes of gaining more information.”

“You are exactly right!” a voice announced from behind them. 

“Okura-san,” he sighed, turning to face the woman as she approached them. 

“No need to look so gloomy in my presence,” she said cheerfully. “Especially since I’ve got good news for you! It seems as if Fukuchi-sama is thinking along the same lines as you — he has agreed for the two of you to continue your task in two primary ways; to decode Edogawa’s notebook while you are here, stationed at this outpost, and later, to make your way to Yokohama to check out the first of Dostoevsky’s Labs.”

“Is there a plan for how we’re going to get there?” 

“Actually, we have come up with something.” Okura frowned, scratching her face. “Listen Sakaguchi-kun, I’m not your biggest fan or anything—”

“I’m aware,” he muttered.

“—but I think you should refuse this proposal. I mean, I suppose it is the best and only way into Yokohama, but the risks…”

“Okura-san, what exactly does Fukuchi intend for us to do?” Oda asked gently as the woman trailed off. 

“It’s been a while since you infiltrated, hasn’t it?”

“Yes— wait, an infiltration?” he asked, masking horror. “Into where?”

“The only group capable of improving your chances of survival in a zombie-ridden city. They were powerful before, undoubtedly, but since the start of the apocalypse they have only flourished.”

She exhaled deeply, uncharacteristically apologetic.

“You will infiltrate the Port Mafia.” 

Chapter Text

Day 8 - 28th May, 2021:

“You know,” Chuuya said to him on the third day since their arrival at Bar Lupin, “I think you should learn how to fight.”

The peas froze on their way to Dazai’s mouth, dropping inelegantly back on the plate. “What?”

“C’mon, shitty Dazai, don’t act like you have no clue what I’m talking about. I’ve cleared out most of the zombies in this area, and I fight any that come close; but what if one day, I fail?”

“Then I die,” he said flippantly. 

Chuuya exhaled through his teeth, glaring down at his food. “Would you really put that on me?”

That made him hesitate. 

“I’m a good shot,” he said finally, after a few moments of painful silence. “My father used to take me to the shooting range. Should the worst come to fruition, I’ll be able to defend myself.”

“None of the guns we have here are strong enough to blow off a head,” Chuuya pointed out. “You need to learn swordwork, Mackere, and the martial arts that come with itl.”

Pushing away the plate, Dazai propped his head on his hands and turned to look at Chuuya. There was annoying conviction in his azure eyes — he wouldn’t just give up anytime soon, god knows why. What did it matter to him if Dazai could fight or not?

“That sounds tiring,” he said. 

“Perhaps,” the other boy acknowledged. Then, faster than his eyes could follow, Chuuya had drawn one of the katanas he constantly kept sheathed at his hip and placed it just before Dazai’s eye.

He blinked. 

“Doesn’t it bother you that I could kill you at any second?” the redhead asked him. “You wouldn’t even have time to reach for a gun. The moment Tatsuhiko-san’s food stores begin to dwindle, I could slit your throat to better my own chances of survival.”

“Would you really,” Dazai stated. It was not a question. “Killing a living person is different to killing someone who is already dead.”

“Maybe it is not so different,” Chuuya said. “I suppose I’ll only find out if I try.”

The blade inched closer to Dazai’s eye. 

“If we fought,” he mused, “I would win; a bullet travels faster than a sword, chibi. All it takes is one click of my fingers and your blood would be staining the floor.”

“The guns are in the storeroom,” Chuuya told him plainly. “It would take you a good few seconds to reach it, especially since you run slower than a mackerel on land. By that time, I would have already lopped your hands off; then what would you shoot with?”

“I wouldn’t be able to hold a katana either,” Dazai felt the need to say.

The redhead let out a frustrated breath, his eyes narrowing. “That’s not the point. Why are you arguing so heavily against this anyway? It won’t bring you any harm, and god knows you could stand to be more in shape. Sooner or later, we will have to vacate this restaurant — I’ve rigged traps and slaughtered many, but the undead know we’re here and they will continue to come for us. When that happens, I have half a mind to leave you here as bait so I can make it out alive. Is that what you want, shitty Dazai? Dying as a rotting monster? Or worse, having your life in my hands?”

“Now, chibi, why did you have to say it like that?” he asked wryly, picking at his bandages. “I didn’t know you cared about my survival so much.”

Chuuya wrinkled his nose. “Everyone knows that it’s easier to survive situations like this if you have someone with you. I’m just being strategic.”

Okay , Dazai thought, studying him. Possibly, it’s something more than that. 

“Okay,” he repeated, this time out loud. “Teach me, then. As you’re doing so, maybe I’ll learn a way to cut my throat more efficiently.”

Ignoring the last part of that statement, Chuuya smiled broadly, reaching over to pat Dazai on the back. “Good. We can start now, then.”

His mouth dropped open in overstated shock. “I haven’t even finished lunch yet!”

“You never do,” Chuuya retorted, sliding off the bar stool to seize Dazai’s wrist and pull him off too. “I have to eat your leftovers, to stop waste.”

“You could eat more,” Dazai said. “Maybe it will help you grow.”

Chuuya kicked him in the knees, and then leaned his sword against the counter. He prodded at Dazai until they were face-to-face, nudging apart his feet so that they were the same width apart as his shoulders. 

“We’ll start with basic martial arts,” he declared. “I’m not putting steel in your hands at this stage, that’s for sure.”

He let Chuuya guide him through a few stances of taekwondo, apparently, and tried not to shiver every time he felt the other boy’s hands on his skin. 

“More forceful,” Chuuya instructed, rapping the back of his neck sharply with one fingernail as Dazai threw punches into the air. “Tighten your fist. What did I say about having a firm stance? You look like the smallest of breezes could blow you over.”

“Shut up,” he complained. “This is hard, and you’re distracting me.”

“Everything is hard,” came his teacher’s unsympathetic voice. Dazai let out a hiss of pain as Chuuya wrenched his elbow back, hands straightening the curve of his arm. “Don’t bend it. Here, like this.”

Gentler than he expected, Chuuya guided his fist forward, his grasp so warm Dazai could feel it seeping through the fabric of his bandages and right down into his bone. His hands curled around Dazai’s own, pressing fist to = palm.

“Stronger,” he said. “You need to have some willpower behind it.”

Dazai was silent for a while. 

“Chibi is holding my hand,” he said eventually, trying to keep the strange wonder from seeping into his voice. It had been a while since someone would touch him willingly, and yet the redhead seemed to do so unbearably often.

Chuuya jerked away, affronted. He pinched the skin just above Dazai’s wrist. “Shut the fuck up. I’m going to take a shower — your form better be perfect when I get back.”

***

He emerged with a towel wrapped around his waist, droplets of water still dripping from his russet-gold hair and the toned muscles of his back. 

Dazai swallowed, and looked away. 

“Put on some clothes,” he snarked, just to fill the silence. 

“I’ve been wearing that bloody school uniform for ages,” Chuuya grumbled. “Every day I take it off to shower, and then I have to put it back on. Any chance Tatsuhiko-san kept some spare clothes around here?”

Scratching at the faded insignia of Yokohama International School that was emblazoned on his jacket, Dazai pursed his lips. “We could wear his clothes, I suppose. He lived here, after all. Bar Lupin is his family business.”

“Who’s owning it after him?” the other boy frowned. “Will they come after us?”

“The way you phrase it makes it sound like they’re going to hire a hitman to take us out,” he joked. “He has a son in Kyoto, apparently. Won’t be coming here any time soon though. Anyway, can we go back to the clothes-less situation?”

“I’m not wearing the clothes of dead people,” he announced. “Arthur told me that if I ever did, their souls would come to possess my body.”

“Then go back into your stinky shirt, I don’t care.”

Chuuya huffed and stomped away. After a few minutes of blissful, slug-less silence, he returned wrapped in a large, maroon bathrobe. Dazai choked on the water he had poured himself. 

“Out of everything, you choose to wear that ? And after all that chatter about not wearing the clothes of dead people?”

“This doesn’t count,” Chuuya told him. “Bathrobes aren’t clothes. Does Tatsuhiko-san have a washing machine?”

He tilted his head to the side. “I’m not sure… probably? I mean, this was his home. If we explored it a little bit more—”

“Hell no,” Chuuya said instantly. “You are asking to get possessed.”

Dazai sighed and picked at his bandages. “Oh please. The best thing about dead people is that they stay dead.”

“You won’t be chirping that tune when you get possessed.”

Much to his discomfort, Dazai felt his lips twitch upwards. He opened his mouth, but then shut it abruptly as an alarming thump reverberated from somewhere above them. They watched in shocked horror as cracks began spreading across the wooden (and horribly unreinforced roof, he remembered now) as a scrabbling noise grew clearer and clearer. 

Chuuya lunged for his katanas, one hand flying out to push against Dazai’s chest as the roof collapsed after days of hacking from zombies that they had been too wrapped up to even notice. Cursing that oversight, Dazai could do nothing but watch as four zombies fell through the hole in the wood, with more bound to come soon. 

“Dazai,” Chuuya said, sounding remarkably calm. “Go and hide in the bedroom.”

If he was a braver person, perhaps he would’ve insisted on staying. 

The Slug can handle it, he told himself as he ran away like the fucking coward he was. I would only get in his way.

He reached the supply closet just behind the counter where they kept the guns (and the very expensive wine), and grabbed one just in case the monsters managed to overpower Chuuya. Suddenly, just as he was about to leave, Chuuya’s cry of alarm pierced the air. Dazai whipped his head around in time to see the redhead stumble back, a long gash tearing down his shoulder as the remaining three zombies advanced on him while the fourth lay motionless on the floor. 

“Chuuya!” he shouted. 

“Leave!” the boy roared back, glancing at him for barely a second. 

And yet, that second was enough for him to falter, missing his swing and stumbling over the restrictive material of his bathrobe. The mouths of the zombies stretched into matching sinister smiles, drool lingering on their chapped lips while hunger gave life to their dull eyes.

“Oh no,” Dazai muttered, mostly to himself as one of them tried to sink its teeth into Chuuya’s flesh. “Oh no you fucking don’t.”

He was there before he knew it, picking up the sword Chuuya had not used to pierce one of the zombies’ chest, while his other hand shot bullets into its eyes. That gave Chuuya enough time to recover, snatching the gun away from Dazai to send bullets into the tendons of the rest, forcing them to their knees before decapitating them. 

Once he was done, he came to Dazai. 

Holding the zombie he had impaled at an arm’s length, Dazai passed it awkwardly to Chuuya, who gave him back the firearm. His heart was pounding in his throat, the feeling of shock wearing off as something more giddy replaced it. No wonder Chuuya spent most of his days out there killing the undead — this felt good. 

He stumbled over to the headless corpses and nudged it with his toe. It spasmed briefly, more of a distant instinct than anything — but despite being aware of that, Dazai jumped anyway in surprise. 

“You should be more dead,” he said to the bleeding stump. “It’s no less than what you deserve.”

Then he fired three more times; one for its skull, one for its lungs, the last for its stomach. He probably would’ve carried on, the sound of his laughter bouncing from wall-to-wall, but Chuuya sank his nails into the back of Dazai’s neck and gripped on. 

“Ouch,” he said. “Stop that.”

“Then you stop wasting our ammunition,” Chuuya snapped. “Choose one: bandages or bullets. You don’t get use up both.”

Humming pensively, Dazai swivelled to survey Chuuya. “It’s lucky for you that I have used up neither. That wound needs cleaning.” 

“We should fix the roof first, before more zombies come.” Chuuya’s face was impassive, but the pained lines of his body told Dazai everything he needed to know. The zombie’s claws had ripped him from the top of his left shoulder to just beneath his ribs — it was not the deepest of scratches, but it was not shallow either. 

“That can wait,” Dazai said, kicking at Chuuya’s ankles until his feet started to trudge reluctantly to the bathroom. “Stay there. I’ll deal with the roof.”

“How?” Chuuya asked, not unkindly. “What, are you going to wrap bandages around it?”

“Have some faith, chibi. Trust me, won’t you?” he said exasperatedly, shoving him in and closing the door in his befuddled face. “I’ll be back; cleaning that wound is not a one-person job.”

He heard Chuuya’s irritated growl from inside and laughed, hurrying back to the main bar to survey the broken roof carefully. Now, how would he deal with this? 

Grabbing one of Chuuya’s katanas, which he definitely did not need to know Dazai intended to use, he placed a bar stool underneath the gaping hole and peered upwards into it. 

The building just above Bar Lupin was an apartment block, home to some of Yokohama’s upper-middle class. Dazai studied the view for a moment: bright, shining lights that had not yet flickered out, alabaster walls and an elaborate painting hanging on one of them. 

Thankfully, no zombies in sight. 

He scrambled onto the stool and muttered a quick prayer before clutching the edges of the hole and hoisting himself upwards. It was fortunate that Bar Lupin never had a particularly high ceiling — otherwise, embarrassingly, he would not have had enough arm strength succeed in this particular endeavour. 

After a bit of cursing and sliding, he finally managed to emerge in the room above. The first thing that caught his attention was the completely unnecessary and very ostentatious couch nearby; but more importantly, it was large enough to just about cover the hole. Now, for the ordeal of moving it…

Dazai tilted his head back, gave himself a minute to regret the unhappy circumstances of his miserable life, and then set his bony hands on the smooth satin and began to push. 

***

Chuuya looked at himself in the mirror for an obscenely long amount of time, as blood dripped down the bathrobe and started to stain the floor. He touched the scratches on his face, earned from days of rotten nails reaching for skin, and then the curls of his flaming hair that had fallen out of their ponytail. 

For a moment he considered cutting it — it would not be helpful if enemies weaponised it in a fight — but then he recalled the flowing locks of both his fathers, and decided against it. 

There was a sharp rap on the door. 

“Mackerel?” he called. 

“Yup,” Dazai replied, jiggling the handle. “Geez, why’d you lock it?”

Chuuya moved to open the door and ushered Daza inside before slamming it shut after him. “Because of the zombies, obviously.”

“They can’t turn doorknobs, you know?”

“I don’t, actually. Now, can we get to dealing with… this?” He gestured to the vermillion lacing across his bare skin as he took off the bathroom. “It hurts like hell.”

Dazai frowned. “It’ll hurt more once I’m done with it.”

“Shut up,” he said. “As if I don’t know that.”

Shrugging, Dazai reached above him into the cabinets and took out the first aid kit Tatsuhiko had helpfully kept in there — probably for when the bar fights got particularly bad. He took out an unused roll of bandages, some alcohol wipes and a stitching kit. 

“Sit down,” Dazai ordered Chuuya, who, much to his annoyance, complied. He hopped onto the sink, the other boy moving to stand in front of him. From this angle, they were about the same height, annoyingly.

Skillfully, Dazai’s long fingers ripped open the packet of one of the alcohol wipes. 

“Think happy thoughts,” he said, and then pressed it to Chuuya’s wound mercilessly. 

Chuuya fought back a scream, feeling metal in his mouth as he bit down on his tongue. His fingers clenched around the edge of the sink, digging into marble. 

“Bite this instead,” Dazai said, his eyes uncannily observant as he pulled out a cotton pad and slipped it into Chuuya’s mouth. He twitched as the tip of the brunette’s fingers brushed against his bottom lip. 

The cotton was uncomfortable between his teeth, but it gave him something to focus on as Dazai carefully wiped away the remaining slips of blood, threaded the needle in a way that suggested he had done so before, and pressed the metal to the edge of the wound. 

Chuuya’s arms came onto the other boy’s shoulders almost instinctively, gripping into the stained fabric of his shirt as fire seared through him. 

Mildly, Dazai said, “Don’t scratch me,” and continued. 

At some point he barely registered the pain anymore, his body growing accustomed to the sharp point poking through skin. Once it was all done, he jerked away from Dazai to examine the neat sewing. 

“You’re good at this,” he admitted begrudgingly, reaching over to start wrapping the bandages around himself. That much, he could do on his own. 

“I’ve done it before,” the other boy said, leaning back to examine his handiwork with an air of satisfaction. 

“Really? Were you very clumsy as a child?”

Dazai smiled wryly, and in a rare show of honesty, said, “The opposite, actually. The wounds weren’t self-inflicted — at least, not until I was thirteen. Before that, it was all the work of my dear father.”

Chuuya slid down from his perch and picked up one of Dazai’s bandaged forearms, turning it around in his hand. “I’m sorry.”

The other boy laughed, though both of them could hear with obvious clarity how fake it was. “That’s alright. I mean, you have amnesia. You probably don’t even know your father.”

“Maybe it’s better that way,” Chuuya hummed, tracing the white linen. “Can I take this off?”

For a moment he regretted even asking as Dazai bristled slightly, but the boy merely exhaled and appeared resigned. “Tell me another secret of yours first.”

A small price to pay to get this frozen Demon to melt. 

“I was one of Dostoevsky’s test subjects, back in the Great War,” he said quietly. “There isn’t much I remember of that either, to be honest — just brief flashes there and there, and the occasional nightmare that I feel in my gut is a memory; but it dissipates once I wake up.”

Dazai’s eyebrows lifted up. “What? You were one of the captives? How old were you?”

“Around eleven, when they first got me. I stayed there for about two years, I think, before Arthur and Paul rescued us and shut down the Labs. I don’t remember my life before Dostoevsky got his hands on me, but I’d like to believe that that's mercy.”

The Mackerel didn’t say anything for a while, but instead started to unwrap the bandages around his wrist. They fell to the floor in a cascade of ivory. 

“Here,” he said, thrusting his arm at Chuuya. It was a battlefield of scars, beginning with uniform white lines down the pale skin, before it appears he had a fit of frustration and started to tear the rest of it up with no particular pattern in mind. “These, I did on my own. The ones on my back, unfortunately not.”

“I’m sorry,” Chuuya murmured, not meeting Dazai’s eyes. 

But Dazai laughed again, and this time it sounded genuine. “For what? It’s not like you did this — and besides, I think your situation is far worse.”

“It’s not a competition,” he snapped. “Your life’s been pretty horrible as well.”

“Oh dear, look at the pair of us,” the brunette chucked, running fingers through the top of Chuuya’s head. “Bad luck personified. We should stick together, eh chibi? Maybe two negatives will make a positive.”

“Shut up. Come on, let’s see how you managed to fix the roof.”

Dazai winced. “It’s temporary, that’s for sure. I suggest we find another place to stay.”

Sighing, Chuuya tugged the bathrobe over himself once more, stubbornly ignoring the blood, and pushed open the door. “That was inevitable regardless.”

***

“Hey Oda,” Ango said, leaning back in the office chair and rubbing aggressively at the forehead. “What do you think about this?”

He pointed to a line of writing in the notebook spread out in front of them. “This looks like Hiragana, don’t you think? It doesn’t have the same arbitrary swirls as the other symbols that Edogawa was using.”

Oda peered over his shoulder. “You may be right. If so, it reads ‘Ka-shi-mu-ra’. Does that strike a bell?”

“I’m not sure. But it is curious, isn’t it? In fact, I’m surprised we haven’t caught it sooner — it’s repeated here surprisingly often, and is usually followed by these three symbols.”

“Any proposed translations for those?”

Shaking his head, Ango took off his glasses and scrubbed at them with the edge of his shirt. “Nope. This ‘Kashimura’ is the only lead we have from the notebook so far. It’s a surname, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Perhaps this is talking about one of the victims of Dostoevsky’s experimentation.” 

“It could also be an accomplice of his,” Ango said.

“If it was, surely we would’ve heard of this person already. Working with Japan’s number one enemy? There’s no way their identity would not have been discovered,” Oda countered.

“I suppose you’re right…” he mused, taking a large gulp of his double-caffeine extra-bitter coffee. “Either way, we leave for Yokohama in two days. When that happens, we ought to keep an eye out for this Kashimura figure.”

***

A wise man had once told Paul that helicopters were not built for long-distance travel. Conveniently, he had forgotten this fact; so the first time that the helicopter started to spiral and splutter towards the ocean, he could do nothing but shriek in panic as their deaths became imminent. 

“Paul, shut the fuck up and let me drive!” Arthur gritted through his teeth, swatting away his arm to twist around the controls frantically, forcing them out of the storm. 

Almost immediately after the fuel tank glowed red in warning, leading to more screeching, rapid-fire prayers in French and an emergency landing on an uninhabited island. 

Two days later, they crashed into the field of a Japanese farm in the west of Kawasaki, came face-to-face with their first zombie, and promptly both shit their pants from shock and chopped its body to little pieces with an unnecessarily large amount of gunfire. 

One day after that embarrassing disaster that thankfully no one was around to witness, they approached the border of Yokohama in their stolen vehicles and were promptly stopped by a troop of soldiers. They gave their names, spoke in perfect Japanese, and then Googled themselves up just for kicks — and the captain instantly let them through without even consulting his superior, all for the price of an autograph from each. 

“It’s been four years,” Arthur said thoughtfully, staring after the armoured men as they walked away, leaving them behind in a city infested with the undead. “You’d think they would have forgotten their hero worship by now.”

Paul shrugged. “We saved many of them from awful deaths. The Japanese, of all cultures, would not forget a favour like that.”

“True enough, I suppose. Come on; Chuuya’s last location was that police station, right? How long will it take us to get there?”

“A good few hours if we walk. I’m hoping we could steal a car again?”

Frowning, Paul scanned their surroundings. “If you’re willing to ignore your sensitivities, then we could.”

“What are you talking about— oh,” Arthur said as he followed Paul’s gaze to a zombie pinned underneath a car. “You think that thing has keys in one of its pockets?”

“It’s a construction worker; what good construction worker doesn’t have keys somewhere?” 

Arthur gulped and fidgeted. “If you do this, I’ll do the dishes for a month when we get back.”

“Two months,” Paul countered, moving towards the zombie. 

“Fine,” his husband sighed, admitting defeat. “You strike a hard bargain.”

Grinning, Paul withdrew his gun and fired, striking the zombie through the skull. To no one’s surprise it did not drop dead; he shot at it again, this time through the top of its neck. It was enough to sever the head almost completely — he looked away, the grotesque sight too much for even him as he slid out a knife from a sheath sewn inside his waistcoat and cut away the last remaining tendon.

Finally, the zombie stopped twitching. 

Inhaling deeply, Paul tried not to breathe in through his nose as he fumbled inside its pockets. Eventually, after seconds that felt like years, he emerged victorious and scrambled back to Arthur as quickly as possible. 

“I should’ve asked for three months,” he grumbled, pressing down on the button. Somewhere nearby, a large truck beeped in response. They jogged over to it and climbed in, turning on the ignition. 

Arthur placed his hands on the steering wheel. 

“Not so fast,” came a voice from in front of them. Paul straightened to peer over the dashboard, meeting eyes with the young man standing before them. He had ash-blonde hair in a colour not unlike his own, though it was styled far less stylishly — his right eye was almost completely covered by the wispy strands. 

“Who are you?” Arthur called, poking his head out the window. “And what do you want?”

“Oh, you speak Japanese!” the man said happily. “Thank goodness. My English is lamentable, to say the least. Come outside, will you? I want to have a nice talk.”

“Do you not know who we are?” Paul asked, growing impatient. “I am Paul Verlaine and this is my partner Arthur Rimbaud. We were responsible for the rescue of your fellow civilians in the Great War — of course we speak Japanese! Now that you know our status, let us through!”

“Your status doesn’t matter here,” he replied, “because you are not the ones in power.”

“Obviously not. The Japanese Government is in control here, but even they approved our entrance into Yokohama.” Not strictly the truth, but not really a lie either.

“Wrong!” the man declared, waving his hands dramatically. “Not even the government holds Yokohama anymore, although they are still regrettably in control of Kawasaki and Tokyo, the two other infected regions.”

Arthur scratched at his head. “If so, who’s in power here?”

“Why, the Port Mafia, of course! The organisation that I work for. My name is Ace, Transcendents, and I am to escort you to my boss. Such famous presences do not go unnoticed here — Mori-sama has eyes everywhere. He asks that you come see him.”

“And if we refuse?” Paul asked, although the answer was clear. 

“Then you die,” Ace said, his smile turning maniacal. “We have no use for foreigners like yourselves.”

“Give us a moment to consider,” he called, and then turned to face Arthur. “We should run him over.”

“There’s no way he doesn’t have backup. If we do that, we could get shot,” his husband pointed out. “It might be safer to go meet this Mori person.”

“Oh, just for him to use us to hold a coup d'état? I’d take my chances with bullets. It’s not as if we haven’t been in similar situations before. Besides, how do you know that they won’t kill us as soon as we step outside? The glass of this truck’s windows are hardly bulletproof vests, but they are the only things that could possibly protect us from firepower.”

Arthur pinched his forehead, tugging on his ponytail. “I don’t like this.”

“Whatever,” Paul said, and then threw himself on top of Arthur to step on the accelerator as the truck shot forward. Ace barely managed to roll out of the way, spitting curses while they heard the sound of bullets thud against the back. The window to his right shattered, glass cutting his face and arms. Ignoring it resolutely, Paul drove onwards. 

“They don’t need to kill you, because I’ll do it myself!” Arthur gasped once he had distangled their limbs and maneuvered himself into the passenger seat. “What the fuck was that? Do you have a death wish?”

“The opposite, actually,” he responded, swerving through a narrow alley in a valiant attempt to lose their pursuers whom he could see through the rearview mirror. “We have a better chance of surviving this way and you know it. I count twenty behind us, possibly more in front if they know this territory as well as I suspect, given that they’re a criminal syndicate based here. I’m going to get us as close to the station as possible, and then we’ll go on foot to have a better chance of losing them.”

Glass exploded once more, this time destroying the mirror he had just been peering into. Paul flinched back, and drove harder. 

While he had found it unbelievably tedious at the time, he now thanked God that Shakespeare had forced them to memorise the entire layout of Yokohama for their reconnaissance mission. It meant that he still recalled with perfect precision the police station that Chuuya had directed them to, and the precise route to get there. 

At some point most of their pursuers had disappeared; despite the truck’s frustratingly limited pace, it would still have been difficult for people to keep up on foot. 

Exchanging glances with Arthur, he gestured to their surroundings with one hand. Arthur nodded. 

With that assent, Paul stepped on the brakes and the vehicle lurched to a halt. They waited there for a few seconds; when no gunfire erupted, it became clear that they had truly lost the Port Mafia. 

“They must not be very well trained,” Paul remarked as he slid open the door and jumped out, landing quietly and slipping into the shadows of the nearest building. Arthur followed just as quietly, pressing his shoulder against Paul’s own. 

“Let’s not underestimate them just yet,” he whispered, tapping at Paul’s thigh in a gesture that clearly meant move . “This could be a trap.”

Stalking against the curve of the building’s brick wall, they crept along until it opened out at a main street. He could see the shape of zombies milling around just meters away, and held his breath. Regardless they turned at their approach. 

“This,” Arthur said, “is still preferable to fighting humans.”

The first of the undead charged towards them, snarling noisily. 

“Aim for the kneecaps,” Paul told his husband. “Our guns don’t have the power to blow their heads off. We’ll have to be satisfied with crippling.”

“Sure.” The black-haired man fired, his bullets hitting their marks with deadly precision. The zombie crumpled, and as did its companions when Paul sliced through tendons and bone. 

In the distance, he heard a whistle that was no doubt human-made, possibly a signal from that Port Mafia scum. It was not as if gunshots were by any means quiet. 

“Let’s keep going,” he said, and then ran off. 

They arrived at the police station with little to no trouble. For all the power that that syndicate supposedly had, none of their men were trained in the art of espionage to the extent that he and Arthur were; so although at times they heard footsteps soon behind or the glint of a knife in the distance, neither came even close to touching them. In times like this it was technique that truly counted, not brute strength. 

“Do you really think Chuuya’s still in there?” Arthur murmured doubtfully, gazing at the dilapidated building. 

“Have some faith,” Paul replied, and then forged forward. 

The door gave way underneath his touch, crumpling to the side as he shoved it open. 

“Chuuya!” he shouted. “Are you in here?”

His voice echoed down the empty corridors, bouncing off the walls before returning to him. “Chuuya!”

“There’s no use shouting,” Arthur said, touching him on the shoulder. “We’ll just attract more zombies to us. Let’s go inside.”

The two of them stepped over the threshold, Paul fighting back his apprehension. He had been running high on adrenaline ever since they entered Japan; not that things had dialled down, there was exhaustion flooding over him. Pushing it down, he led the way.

“We should split up,” he suggested after the first few rooms turned out empty. “It would be faster.”

“And also less safe, should we encounter a zombie.”

“As if you couldn’t handle a zombie,” Paul scoffed, shoving Arthur playfully.

The other man smiled. “Why’d you assume I was talking about myself? It’s you I’m worried about, my dear.”

“Ugh, shut up,” he replied. “Let’s just get a move on, yeah? The quicker we find Chuuya, the quicker we can get out of this horrid place. I’m even looking forward to whatever punishment Shakespeare has waiting for us back home.”

“As you wish.” Arthur gave a mock-curtsy, and then strolled in the opposite direction. “Meet me back here in ten?”

“With any luck, we won’t need so long,” Paul muttered and continued onwards. 

The next rooms were also empty, as well as completely upturned. Most were offices with documents scattered across the floor, stained crimson with blood and something else that Paul did not want to consider. Occasionally he would stumble across eviscerated body parts: an arm here, a leg strewn there. He had not known zombies to have a penchant for disembowelment — were these survivors, perhaps, tearing each other apart? 

Nothing was alive in this place save for Arthur and himself, so Paul supposed he would never know. 

It had only been five minutes when a shout reached his ears. Paul whirled around and immediately sprinted towards the noise, recognising it as Arthur’s voice. He found his husband standing outside what appeared to be an interrogation room, clutching at the doorframe as if it would keep him upright. 

“Look,” he choked out, pointing. Paul followed the curve of his finger to rest his eyes on a katana leaning against the wall — and then he too started to heave for air. It was one of Chuuya’s, that was for certain. 

“He was definitely here,” Paul said, striding in to pick up the sword and examine it further. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of two rucksacks; rifling through them, he found a multitude of discarded belongings and food that some of which he recognised as Chuuya’s, while the ones he didn’t must’ve belonged to the roommate his son had mentioned. “What happened?"

Arthur chuckled darkly and gestured to their surroundings. “I think it’s pretty obvious what happened.”

Paul’s heart clenched at the dejection in his tone. Striding over, he cupped Arthur’s cold cheeks in his hands and turned his head so that their eyes met. 

“Chuuya had three ceremonial katanas,” he said “He loves each of them like children. There’s no reason for him to leave two behind in his dorm; therefore, he must have taken the others and forgot about the third in an attempt to flee.”

“This is sounding rather far-fetched,” Arthur told him honestly. 

Pursing his lips, Paul glanced around for any other clues to further his case. His eyes caught on a white cloth wrapped around the handle of the open doors. Were those… bandages?

“Look, look!” he said, releasing Arthur to run over and inspect it. “These were clearly put into place by human hands! It means that someone in here managed to escape and tried to trap the zombies inside. And I bet you anything it was Chuuya. Our son had swords with him, and he’s a martial arts prodigy! He of all people would be able to survive a situation like this.”

Arthur remained silent, uncertainty and fragile hope flickering across his face. 

“Well, whatever the case, we have to keep searching, right? I won’t stop until I see his carcass — not that there will be one, because we are guaranteed to find him alive.”

“Right,” his husband murmured, a little bit of colour coming back into his cheeks. “We do need to keep searching.”

Chapter Text

Three Years Ago

Ever since the raid of the Yokohama Lab, Fyodor Dostoevsky knew that sooner or later, they would come for him. The end of the war was nearing as both sides exhausted themselves; it was getting harder and harder for them to find reasons to keep fighting. But regardless, it seemed that the wildness of his experiments had turned the stomach of even Agatha Christie herself, since why else would she agree to his arrest?

He had not imagined his demise to be this precise day; in fact, his calculations had suggested perhaps a week after. That was why an uncharacteristic fear shot through him as the door to the Tokyo Lab was gunned down and the trooping of feet entered the cavernous building — his predictions were so rarely wrong. 

“What do we do now, Fedya?” Nikolai asked, from where he was pressed against the supply closet, bracketed between Fyodor’s hands. “Do you have a plan?”

“Unfortunately, I have been caught off my guard this time,” he said, searching the other man’s eyes. He did indeed have a plan, but there was no chance that Nikolai would like it, given that it involved sacrificing the white-haired man to buy himself time to get away. 

The footsteps thundered closer. 

“Oh dear,” Fyodor sighed. “Do you have any last words?”

“Yes,” Nikolai said, and then looped his arms around Fyodor’s neck to pull him down and kiss him on the mouth. 

This, perhaps, was the first time that his mind had gone truly, utterly silent. He let out a sound that was all but muffled, and thought, well, this just got more complicated.

He was a monster, yes, but he was not a monster. How could he possibly sacrifice Nikolai now? 

His life had been thirty-odd years of numbness, of sitting by his bedroom window as the world moved past and he stayed stagnant. Of watching things turn to shit and not being able to do anything about it. Of his father telling him that this was his purpose , to be seen and not heard, so that they would be the perfect nuclear family that stupid old man had always fantasised about.

Eventually, it had all become enough. He left and went to seek his fortune elsewhere, a man in his late twenties who barely knew the world. 

Somewhere along he discovered a penchant for war, and met the woman Agatha Christie, who gave him freedom. 

And now, Nikolai Gogol, the man who he’d never seen as anything else other than a lackey, was giving him feeling .

After a few more moments that they really could not afford to waste like this (although he did not mind, not that he would ever admit it), Nikolai pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words tumbling out in an almost incomprehensible rush. “I had to do that at least once before I died.”

Fyodor opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He touched his swollen lips lightly, a tangle of complicated emotions swelling within him like a tidal wave.

“No,” he murmured. “It’s fine. It was… it was good.”

At this Nikolai's eyes widened, and a large smile split his lips. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” he said honestly. If they had a little more time then maybe he would’ve leaned in again and claimed the touch he didn’t even know he desired, but as a resounding bang reached his ears he knew that the last bits of sand in the metaphorical hourglass had trickled away. 

“Fyodor Dostoevsky," said Yukichi Fukuzawa as he flung open the closet doors with more flair than what was necessary. “Come quietly, or die.”

He stepped in front of Nikolai, shielding him from view. “Do not act as if those events are mutually exclusive, Fukuzawa-kun. My death is inevitable, as is yours, and as is all of ours here. The only thing that gives life meaning is death, remember?”

Fukuzawa’s were two hard diamonds glinting with barely suppressed fury. “I would kill you where you stand, if my duty did not exist.” His voice shook slightly. “Death is inevitable? Is that what you told yourself as you cut Ranpo into pieces?”

“Your little detective?” Fyodor snorted. “He was asking for it. Who comes into an enemy lair alone? Then again, I have heard that he lacks basic common sense.”

The older man let out a cry of fury, lifting up his gun. 

“I am going to kill you,” he hissed. “I am going to fill your worthless body with bullets and feed it to your kin, the rats.”

White-gloved hands curled around Fukuzawa’s shoulders as a woman behind him raised her cane and tapped the barrel of his firearm. 

“Put it down, sir,” she said calmly. “We need him alive.”

Taking a shaky breath, Fukuzawa dipped his head. “You are right, Yosano-san. Forgive me for my recklessness.”

“It is no problem. I want to see Ranpo-san avenged just as much as you do, but this is not the way to do it.”

“How would you do it then?” Fyodor couldn’t resist asking. “Your options are rather limited, given your delicate sensibilities and moral compass.”

At this, Yosano smiled. It was as disturbing as it was casually charismatic. She regarded him black-lined maroon eyes, adjusting the collar of her shirt. 

“I do have ideas,” she told him. “We only need you alive, don’t we?”

She motioned to the soldiers behind her, who came to attention with a snap of their feet. “Seize the white-haired clown and restrain the Russian rat.”

The men moved with the discipline of machines; Fyodor reached for the gun he kept on him but Yosano shot at his hand with an ease that suggested hours of practice, forcing him to forgo the weapon as he clutched his bleeding fingers. 

However, that was more of a reflex than anything else. Years of self-inflicted abuse taught him how to put pain aside like the inconvenience it was. He reached for the gun again. 

This time, instead of partaking from a distance, Yosano herself walked forward and crushed his fingers beneath the heel of her combat boot. She kicked the gun out of his reach with the other foot, bending down and gripping his hair to tilt his chin up at her. 

“You stupid fucking rat,” she murmured, lips hovering just above his ear. “I will enjoy watching you die.”

Then she let go, leaving space for the soldiers to twist his hands behind his back uncomfortably and cuff heavy metal around his wrists. Beside him, the same was being done to Nikolai, who was uncharacteristically silent. Yosano approached him next, gently knocking her fist against the side of his head. 

“Who are you, little white clown?” she asked. “I didn’t know Dos-kun kept accomplices. Are you his partner in crime or his bed-warmer?”

Nikolai stayed quiet, bowing his head as the soldiers forced both of them outside of the closet and onto their knees on the concrete floor. 

“Cat got your tongue?” Yosano said. “That’s okay. We’ll fix that soon enough with a bit of blood.”

At this, Fukuzawa tensed. “What are you planning, Yosano-san?”

Moral code , Fyodor thought with some sense of self-satisfaction. 

“The clown isn’t valuable enough to keep alive,” the woman answered. “You wanted Dos-kun to hurt, right? I heard you telling Kunikida-kun about it; you wanted to tear him from limb to limb in a perfect copy of what he did to Ranpo.”

Her gaze turned back to Nikolai and Fyodor shuddered involuntarily at the insanity present in them. “We’re not allowed to touch the Rat, unfortunately. However, no one called dibs on his slut, so he’s mine for the taking.”

Fukuzawa pursed his lips, hesitant. “I—”

“Do you remember,” Yosano interrupted, “how long it took us to piece back together Ranpo’s bones just so we could have a body to bury? How it was so difficult that eventually we had to forsake it and scatter his ashes to the wind? Do you remember the way Poe howled at the funeral?”

There was a weighty pause, but then Fukuzawa turned his back. 

“Do what you want,” he said gruffly. “I will turn a blind eye, just this once.”

Yosano didn’t need the heavy meat-cleaver she drew from the sheath strapped to her back because her laughter was sharp enough to cut. 

“Sometimes justice needs to be taken into our own hands, Fukuzawa-san,” she cooed, leisurely walking over to where Nikolai was bound. She shifted the blade to one hand and used the other to peel open the man’s closed eyes. “I want you to watch, clown. And I want the Rat to watch as well.”

“Ma’am,” one of the soldiers called out, and wrenched Fyodor’s head back over when he turned it to the side. 

The woman smirked at the sight, and then pressed the edge of her knife against the joint that attached Nikolai’s arm to his shoulder. It was at this moment that his partner began to scream, a horrible, keening sound that ricocheted against his bones. 

“Fedya!” he screamed. “Fedya!”

“Oh geez, I guess your tongue’s loose now,” Yosano said disgustedly. “I’ll get rid of that next.”

Then, she brought down the meat-cleaver. 

Nikolai’s anguished cries filled the room from floor to ceiling, slicing into Fyodor deeper than any sword ever could. 

“Fedya!” he sobbed, trying to clutch at the stump where his arm had been as the soldiers forced him still. 

From what felt like some distance away, Fyodor heard someone shouting “Nikolai!” and realised it was him.

“Actually,” Yosano pondered, observing his reaction. “I do like hearing him scream after all, especially if it leads to you following along. I’ll save the tongue for last.”

She positioned the cleaver against his other arm, and swung. 

He didn’t really remember the rest, only that at some point Nikolai’s voice had vanished as his dismembered body slumped to the ground. If he tried hard enough he could recall straining against the men restraining him in a last-ditch attempt to reach his partner, although he wasn’t sure why he would even bother given that death is permanent and at that point Nikolai was undeniably, unbearably dead . 

“Take the rat,” Yosano ordered coldly, kicking at Nikolai’s corpse. 

Callous arms gripped his forearms, dragging him upright as he was manhandled out of the Lab and thrust into the backseat of a police car, the door slammed shut behind him. Outside the window he could see the flash of cameras as the media swarmed the vehicle, no doubt clamouring to get a glimpse of the infamous war criminal who had been captured at last. 

Yosano and Fukuzawa slid into the front seat. 

“Knock him out, Yosano-san,” Fukuzawa said.

“Sure,” the woman replied, leaning backwards to face him. 

“Did that murder make you happier, Yos-kun?” Fyodor asked her mockingly as she reached towards him with a taser. 

He searched her face for some kind of gesture that would give away the inner turmoil that was no doubt frothing inside of her; revenge, after all, was often overrated as a path to satisfaction. He tried not to give away his surprise when he found none. 

“Yes,” Yosano said, and then tapped him with the taser. 

The world darkened. 

***

Day 9 - 29th May, 2021:

“We leave for the Port Mafia tomorrow,” Odasaku said, spinning around in his office chair. Hearing those words and watching him twirl was enough to cause bile to rise in Ango’s throat; he stuck out one foot and stilled the movement. 

“I know,” he said, staring down at his coffee. “This was not on my bucket list.”

“Did you know,” his partner said cheerfully, “that the Port Mafia punishes traitors by forcing them to bite the curb and then shooting them three times in the chest?”

Ango was going to be sick. “I’m aware of that.”

The door creaked open. They both jumped and whirled around to face the woman standing on the threshold. 

“They torture them first,” she said. “The Port Mafia, I mean. So by the time their teeth are set on concrete, it is almost a mercy killing.”

She chuckled at their open expressions of shock, inviting herself inside and offering them a low curtsy. “Doctor Yosano Akiko, at your service.”

“Sakaguchi Ango and Sakunosuke Oda,” Ango replied, bowing. “Are you perchance the acquaintance that Fukuchi-san wanted us to meet?”

Yosano raised an eyebrow. “An acquaintance? I’ve known that man for over a decade, and he dares to refer to me as an acquaintance?”

“Oh no, those are my words, not his,” Ango hastened to say. “My deepest apologies for offending you.”

He coughed as Yosano thumped him on the back roughly, smirking. “Why so tense, agent? Relax, I’m only messing with you.”

“That’s what I’m always telling him,” Oda chimed in unhelpfully. “He always looks as if he has a stick up his ass, am I right?”

“Ah, I completely get you,” Yosano said thoughtfully. “Maybe a dip in the ice bath will get him to chill out. Haha, get it? Chill out?”

“Funny,” he said dryly, glaring at both of them. “Can we get back to work now? Yosano-san, I was under the impression that you had valuable information to offer?”

“Your impression is correct!” she chirped. “I was actually there at the scene of Dos-kun’s arrest.”

Leaning back, Ango gestured for Yosano to occupy the spare seat, which she took gratefully. “You speak as if you are familiar with him.”

“I chopped up his lover, so I guess you could say that,” the woman said casually. 

Ango blanched and glanced at Odasaku to find that the other man was making the exact same face. “I’m sorry?”

Yosano hummed, then snatched the coffee Ango had set down on his desk to take a sip out of it. “I guess you probably didn’t know. It makes sense that the existence of that clown is kept classified — can you imagine the uproar that would happen if it was revealed that a government agent tortured someone? Even if that someone was a criminal?”

“Who’s the clown?” Oda asked, clearly choosing to ignore the word ‘torture’. 

The doctor’s face twisted into a grimace. “Fyodor’s partner, of sorts. His name was Nikolai Gogol.”

Wracking his brain to try and place that name, Ango was disconcerted to realise that nothing came to mind. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“Unsurprising. Dos-kun kept him hidden from the rest of the world. When we reclaimed the Tokyo Lab, I killed him to unnerve that rat. It worked excellently as well, but Fukuzawa-san put me in counselling after that.”

“Ah,” he said, unsure what to say. “I see.”

However, it seemed unnecessary for him to have said anything at all; Yosano’s eyes had begun to glaze over as she reminisced, her long nails tapping idly on the side of Ango’s cup. 

“You know, back then I thought that the death penalty was not harsh enough for all the shit that Dos-kun did,” she said after a few seconds of quiet. “But they didn’t even end up giving him that.”

“I’d always wondered why,” Oda said, staring down at his hands. “It was the only punishment that seemed fitting, but they merely locked him up.”

“The story’s quite interesting,” Yosano replied. “His father is Dostoevsky Mikhail, a prominent Russian politician. He’s so influential that even after all the atrocities committed by his son, he still manages to remain in power — which would be impressive, if not for his horrible personality. Anyway, I’m getting side-tracked— Mikhail basically kept Fyodor as a prisoner in his own house. The man was barely allowed to leave his sight for the first twenty-ish years of his life. It drove him insane, apparently.”

“So he escaped,” Ango murmured. 

“Almost makes you feel sorry for him, doesn’t it?” the doctor muttered. “I too might’ve gone crazy if I were in that situation. Not that it excuses, you know, his murdering spree . Well, after his arrest, Mikhail came from Russia to visit his son. He told Fukuchi that the best way to punish the man wouldn’t be to sentence him to death, but to keep him behind bars forever. He said that the only thing his son craves more than anything is freedom, and to take that away from him would be much more cruel than just the electric chair.”

Sighing, Ango rubbed at his forehead. “What a horrible man.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Oda added. “But to be honest, all of that seems like a cover-up for behind-the-scenes machinations. He must still want his son alive.”

“That’s what I think as well,” Yosano said. “He probably pulled some strings to make sure we couldn’t give that rat the death penalty. Either way, I bet he’s regretting it now, with Dos-kun on the loose and everything. Speaking of which, have you got any leads yet?”

“We have Edogawa-san’s journal, but it’s almost impossible to decipher,” Ango said. 

At the mention of the detective’s name, Yosano’s eyes turned sorrowful and she gazed down. Those actions were brief, however; she soon looked back up and gave them a triumphant smirk that Ango was coming to associate with her. 

“I guessed so,” she announced. “That’s why I brought a code-cracker with me.”

Tilting his head to the side, Oda studied her curiously. “We gave it to Japan’s best decoders, but they couldn’t figure it out. What’s so special about this one?”

“His name is Edgar Allan Poe,” Yosano explained. “I was with him in America for the past couple of years, sorting through the remnants of the diplomatic messes that the Great War created. He worked with Ranpo-san for many years, so if anyone can decode that genius’ brain, it would be him.”

“Is he here at the moment?” Ango asked, eager to meet this man. 

“There’s still some time before his plane lands,” the woman said as she checked her watch. “Unfortunately, he won’t be back before you two are set to infiltrate the Mafia. No worries though; I’ll have Fukuchi set up a burner phone for you so that he can send over any information he finds.”

Suddenly, she turned her piercing stare on the two of them. “Be careful out there, won’t you? Infiltrating the PM is no small thing. And watch out specifically for a woman named Ozaki Kouyou — we were friends once, and in the right circumstances, she can be even more ruthless than Dos-kun.”

***

Chuuya woke up entangled in Dazai’s limbs; one of the mackerel’s stick-thin forearms was flung over his ribs, while the other curled around his neck in a choking embrace. He scrambled away immediately, disoriented by the odd situation. 

It took him a moment to remember why they had bunked in the police-car. After the destruction of the roof, the two of them decided to pack their belongings and camp in the vehicle instead, given that the invasion of Bar Lupin by the undead was imminent. They had thrown what little supplies they had into the trunk and fought viciously over the open space of the backseat, before eventually growing tired of the tussle and falling asleep twined around each other. 

Dazai let out a breathy snuffle as Chuuya shifted some more. For someone who so rarely slept, it took a lot to wake him up. That was something new Chuuya had found out about him from this past week-and-a-bit wrapped in his presence. 

Hesitantly, he touched the other boy’s dark curls; they were softer than he had expected and felt pleasant on his fingertips. He ran the hair through his hands, and then abruptly pulled away as Dazai opened one eye. 

“I’m supposed to be the one doing the patting, since you’re the dog,” he murmured sleepily. “It’s not meant to be the other way around.”

Chuuya tugged sharply at a strand. “Shush. You should sleep more, while you can. We have a long day ahead.”

Dazai turned his face so that it was pressed against Chuuya’s ribs, his hands flinging outwards as he stretched. “No thanks. I can’t abide the thought of chibi being better at anything than me, even if that thing is just waking up.”

“You’re ridiculous,” he said, struck horrified by the fondness in his tone. He shifted backwards as Dazai sat up, scratching at his head before manoeuvring himself into the driver’s seat. 

They both shuddered as a zombie crashed against the windshield, pawing agitatedly at the glass before Dazai twisted the keys in the ignition and stepped on the accelerator. Chuuya was flung forward, crashing headfirst into the back of the passenger seat to Dazai’s unrepentant snickers. 

“I’m going to kill you,” he gasped, scrambling upright to squirm through to the front and buckle himself into the passenger seat. The car swerved as he elbowed Dazai sharply. 

“Don’t do that,” Dazai said reproachfully. “Do you want me to drive us off a cliff?”

“Whatever,” he said, sliding, pressing his cheek against the window to look at the view. “What’s the plan once we get to the mall?”

“We already went through this. Don’t tell me you have the memory of a goldfish as well as the stink of a dog?”

“Shut up,” Chuuya retorted. “I’m doing this for your benefit. Of course I remember the plan perfectly well.”

“It’s my plan,” Dazai whined. “Why would I be the one to forget it?”

Chuuya let his silence speak volumes. Slumping, Dazai exhaled dramatically. “Fine, you win this round. The plan is to make it into the mall, restock on food, supplies and clothes, and get out as quickly as possible. Queen’s Square has a couple of discrete back entrances, so we’ll use those to attract as little attention as possible.”

“Good enough, I suppose,” Chuuya huffed. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay in the car?”

The other boy rolled his eyes, patting the gun-shaped lumps in the inner pockets of his torn blazer. “I can defend myself, remember?”

“I can’t recall a single moment in which you fought off a zombie by yourself.”

“That’s because you haven’t given me a chance to yet,” Dazai said brightly. “You’ve been claiming all the glory, and I’ve been generous enough to let you.”

Rubbing at his face, Chuuya let it slide. “Get out of there if it’s getting too much for you, okay? There’s no shame in that. It’s simple self-preservation. I won’t even hold it over you.” 

“Be less worried about me and more worried about yourself,” Dazai retorted. “I know you think you’re some kind of martial arts warrior—”

“—I basically am,” Chuuya interrupted sullenly. 

“—but even you would have difficulty running and fighting while carrying packs of supplies. It’s like you said yesterday: things are easier when you have a partner.”

“Oh, are we partners now?” he asked, half-wanting to hear the answer.

“It was your words, not mine,” Dazai pointed out. “But I suppose we are. This doesn’t change the fact that you’re my dog, though.”

“When will you forget about that?” Chuuya growled. “It was one stupid bet that I lost.”

“A bet is a bet and a promise is a promise. Now go get me some water, dog. All this driving’s been making me thirsty.”

“It’s barely been a few minutes!” he exclaimed. Nevertheless, he fished out a plastic bottle they had filled up with tap water from the Bar and tossed it at Dazai, who, infuriatingly, caught it with one hand and a smug smile. 

“Thanks, dog,” he said. 

“I’m going to leave you to die in the mall,” Chuuya deadpanned. 

“Sure, sure. Oh look, we’re almost here!”

Sure enough, he was right. Queen’s Square was one of Yokohama’s largest and most prominent malls, situated by the coast. Chuuya dimly recalled visiting this place often in his first year with Shirase and Yuan, before his time became more and more dominated by schoolwork and the appearance of a certain mackerel who dragged him to the nearby arcade almost every afternoon. 

Dazai drove around until he found a discreet alleyway behind some buildings and parked the car there, where survivors hopefully wouldn’t find or be inclined to steal it. Chuuya thought that the courtesy of the Japanese culture would be its own prevention method against this, but when he had told Dazai as much the other boy had wrinkled his nose and called him much too naive. 

The two of them exited carefully, Chuuya emerging before Dazai to sweep the area thoroughly. When there were no zombies to be seen, they fled for the nearest door, ducking in and pulling it shut behind them. 

Blinking against the dust, Chuuya shielded his eyes against the bright lights as they emerged into the vast corridors of the primary shopping mall in Queen’s Square. He peered upwards and caught the shapes of several zombies milling about on the upper levels. There were a few here as well — they ran towards them eagerly, but Chuuya ducked under their outstretched arms and dragged Dazai after him. 

“Why are we running?” Dazai shouted as the undead followed, hot on their heels. “Zombies are faster than the average human! They’ll catch up to us in no time!”

He yelped hilariously as one came too close, spearing it with the katana Chuuya had kindly allowed him to borrow. The zombie growled, staring for a moment at the blade protruding through its chest before Chuuya reached over and casually sliced open its Achilles tendons. 

“My swords are blunting,” Chuuya admitted. “All this use… they weren’t made for it. We have to save the metal for when it really counts.”

Dazai frowned. “Rational thought is not a good look on you, chibi. Are we headed to the kitchenware store, then?”

“You read my mind,” he replied as they sprinted up the escalators. A crowd of zombies still trailed in their wake, but Dazai drew the gun from his pocket and fired at the safety sign hanging above them, causing it to crash down and temporarily stopping the monsters in their tracks. 

The two of them hurried up to the second level, taking a moment to stop and catch their breath. 

“There’s a grocery store here,” Dazai said, pointing just ahead. “Let’s make a trip there before going up.”

Chuuya nodded. “Sure. It’ll be dangerous though, since there will undoubtedly be many people who tried to hide out there — and those same people will be zombies by now.”

“If we use the operations we discussed the other day, it will be easier. How about Shame and Toad ?”

“If you think it’ll work, then yes,” Chuuya said, taking Dazai’s katana from him and sheathing it in one of the two scabbards hanging at either side of his waist. “That one’s particularly dangerous for you though. Are you sure you don’t want to do Rain Falls Outside the Window Frame instead?”

“Have some faith, Slug.” Dazai made a face that was probably supposed to be reassuring, but all Chuuya felt was unease. 

He closed his eyes, counting to three in his head. Any more than that would be excessive. 

“Fine,” he murmured, lightly shoving Dazai forward. “Go on. Be a good piece of bait.”

Frowning, Dazai shoved him back. “Don’t say it like that.” He cursed as Chuuya levelled the tip of his katana at his chest, only half jokingly. “Fine, fine, I’m going!”

Watching his skinny figure retreat into the dim lights of the shopping center, Chuuya drew both swords and steeled himself. Then, after roughly twenty seconds had passed, he swept in after Dazai. 

The sounds of snarls reached his ears as he dashed inside, swerving around aisles and occasionally catching a stray zombie off guard and lopping off its head with a serenity that confused even himself. Dazai, as the plan required, had guided the zombies into a corner of the store where they clamoured below him as he waved teasingly from atop a shelf that wobbled worryingly. 

That was what Shame and Toad was about — first, Dazai would step in as bait and herd the zombies into a particular spot, retaining their attention for the length of time that Chuuya needed to gather supplies and stash them elsewhere. Afterwards, they would exchange places: Chuuya would lead the zombies off and massacre them in whatever way necessary, and Dazai would flee. They would rendezvous somewhere else after the whole mess was over. 

Chuuya kept an eye on the bandaged maniac as he hooted and hollered and occasionally plucked items off the shelves to throw at zombies that lost focus. The ones that clambered up wood he shot at furiously, blowing off their heads with targeted strikes around the base of their necks. 

For now, he appeared fine. 

Heartbeat roaring voraciously in his ears, Chuuya sped around, collecting food, drinks and even bandages in his wake. He had asked Dazai before this whole ordeal whether or not it would be easier for their roles to be reversed from that start; surely then, in the worst case scenario, Chuuya would be able to fight his way out from the mass of the undead. 

Dazai had shrugged and told Chuuya simply that he did not have enough stamina to keep running around. 

Looking back upon it now, Chuuya was disgruntled to find that Dazai had been right. The thump of dull metal against his shoulderblades ached, even with two layers of clothes and bags between them. Already, a sharp pain had begun to develop under his ribs, and air was becoming harder to breathe. There was a distinct sense of shame curling its arms around him — shouldn’t he be stronger than this? It was just running, after all. 

“Chuuya!” Dazai called, somehow noticing his plight even from so far away. “Leave it! We have opportunities to come back here after today. You’ve done enough.”

Those words seemed to suspend themselves in space and time. The two met eyes across the distance for a moment, before Chuuya forced himself out of his stupor and dipped his head. He rushed outside and planted the overflowing bags behind a large column, throwing an approaching zombie off the balcony. 

Breathing hard, Chuuya gave himself one heartbeat to rest. 

Then he was running again, pelting at full speed towards Dazai while a war-cry strangled itself out of his vocal cords. One by one, the zombies that were so intent on Dazai before turned to face him. 

He stopped in his tracks and pointed his dual swords at them. 

“Come get me.”

***

As the zombies hurtled towards Chuuya, Dazai easily dispatched the ones that didn’t with a few shots from his gun. Then, he leapt down from his perch, tumbling to the cold hard floor with a wince. It was slick with blood underneath his touch; he jerked away and wiped his crimson hands on the nearby wall. 

Then, he ran in the other direction, circling the long way through the grocery store and towards the exit as Chuuya led the zombies deeper within. It was good that this particular shop belonged to a large conglomerate — as such, it was much bigger than the average grocer. 

Zombies from other places had started to flock towards them, drawn in by the commotion. Dazai plastered himself against the floor and slid underneath a stack of shelves, watching as they completely missed him in favour of going after the bite-sized chibi running rampant ahead. 

As soon as he was sure they had disappeared, Dazai hurried outside. He glanced around quickly, wondering where Chuuya might’ve stored the supplies and regretting their lack of discussion surrounding this area. After a few seconds of searching, he found it with ease — the Slug was seriously predictable. Hefting it up over his shoulder, he fished out the whistle nestled in the folds of his collar and blew on it sharply. This was a signal to Chuuya, informing him that he had retrieved the supplies, and urging him to get the fuck out of there . 

Meanwhile, Dazai needed to go. 

Standing out so openly was a death sentence. He searched around for a suitable hiding place and spotted a maintenance closet a few meters away. 

Good. He would wait for Chuuya within. 

Jogging over, he retrieved two pins from his breast pocket and inserted them into the lock, manipulating the metal deftly until he heard a telltale click. The door swung open and he tucked himself inside, leaving just a crack so that he could await Chuuya’s exit. 

Soon enough, there came a shout that was startling in its volume and Chuuya came tearing out from the store, head whipping around wildly as he searched for Dazai. 

“Chuuya!” he shouted. “Over here!”

The other boy’s sea-blue eyes widened as he registered Dazai’s voice. A zombie tore at his sleeve; he yanked it away and started sprinting towards the maintenance closet, footsteps slapping on concrete. 

Zombies were fast, but, as Dazai realised, they were nowhere even close to the hurricane that was Chuuya. Distantly, he recalled the school athletics festival in their first year; Chuuya had bragged to him that he would dominate in all of the track events and so Dazai had foolishly made a bet with him in sheer disbelief. 

That was the first and only wager that he had lost. 

As Chuuya approached Dazai reached out his hands, watching with some degree of concern as the gap between his partner and the zombies lessened. Chuuya was fast, but he was not unstoppable. 

Suddenly, right from the corner of his eye, Dazai spotted yet another of the undead lurking just behind the redhead, having made its way over from one of the upper floors. He cursed his own shortsightedness — he was normally always on his guard, but his eyes had been too focused on Chuuya to notice his surroundings. It was rather embarrassing.

“Chuuya!” he yelled, pointing. “To your left!”

The other boy turned his head to the side and recoiled violently as he caught sight of the zombie that was just inches away. It snapped its teeth at him; Chuuya pierced it through with one of his katanas and flung it away. 

Dazai took a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived. In the blink of an eye, Chuuya’s pursuers had all but caught up to him. They tore at his clothes viciously, desperate famishment clear in each of their movements. Chuuya stabbed at the ones in front, taking off their hands, ears, hair, legs, anything , before vigorously attempting to retake his course. 

He made it just two meters (by Dazai’s crude estimate) before a zombie latched onto his shoe, trying to gnaw through the leather in a way that would almost be amusing if not for the open fear that flashed across Chuuya’s face. Dazai felt cold all over. 

Did he think that he wouldn’t be able to survive this situation? After all that they had gone through?

How absurd. 

Even so… he could understand why Chuuya would be having those thoughts. The zombies were steadily closing in around him as he hacked wildly at the one clinging to his leg, movements made imprecise by panic. 

Clenching the gun tightly, Dazai aimed and fired. His shot blew off that zombie’s arm, effectively freeing Chuuya who bolted towards him without a second thought. If he had been a centimeter off, he would have hit the redhead instead. 

“Dazai!” Chuuya cried. 

“Here!” He stretched out his arms, sagging under the weight as Chuuya gripped tightly onto them. Dazai pulled him inside roughly but did not let go, opting to kick the door closed with his foot instead. 

Thankfully, it locked automatically. Ignoring the pounding fists of the rotting dead against the door, Dazai flung his arms around Chuuya’s neck, burying his nose in crimson hair as the terror he had not allowed himself to feel came bubbling to the surface. Chuuya let out a muffled noise of surprise but sank into the gesture, the fast pounding of his heart audible in the tight space between their bodies. 

He despised touch, normally, but this was okay. 

“You are so stupid,” Dazai murmured. “So, so, stupid.”

“You are even more stupid,” Chuuya retorted, pinching him on the small of his back. “This was your plan.”

Dazai released Chuuya, stepping away to study his barely-visible outline in the dark of the maintenance closet. 

“Let’s never do that plan again,” he said, fully meaning it. 

“Don’t be silly,” the redhead scoffed. “It was a good plan. All of the operations have risks, especially in a situation like this. We—”

“Stay still,” another voice ordered, one that belonged to neither of them. “Do not move, or I will blow out your brains and feed you to the zombies.”

Adrenaline howled in Dazai’s ears as he felt the prick of a knife underneath his ear. He reached for the pocket where he had stashed his gun, only to find it empty. 

Fuck, had he been this distracted?

The lights in the closet turned on with a click , almost blinding him. It revealed who their assailants were; a girl and a boy, practically children. The boy held a gun to Chuuya’s temple, while the girl pressed a knife against Dazai’s throat. 

“My name is Akutagawa Ryuunosuke,” the boy declared. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right here.” 

Chapter Text

This situation was almost laughable — ambushed by children ? Seriously ? 

The look in Dazai’s eyes, however, was not funny at all. Chuuya had seen that kind of sharp, sarcastic fury before, when the other boy had gone off on a shooting spree on a target that was already dead. Briefly, he considered what would have made the Mackerel so angry, but dismissed it almost immediately. Despite the days they spent wrapped in each other’s presence, there were still some things that Dazai did that were incomprehensible to him. 

He settled for shooting him a warning glare as Dazai opened his mouth. 

“We do have some good reasons,” Chuuya said, cutting off Dazai before he could say a word. “But even if we didn’t, don’t you think you’re being hasty? We are both human, after all.”

“Other humans have attacked us here and stolen our supplies,” Akutagawa snarled. “I don’t see why you would be any different.”

“Well first of all,” Dazai snarked, ignoring Chuuya’s frantic gestures to shut your big fat mouth before it gets us killed , “you don’t have any supplies to steal.”

“What my partner is trying to say,” Chuuya interrupted, “is that we didn’t come here for any bad reasons. If you let us go, we’ll help you escape this mall and gather more food.”

“Or we could just eat the food you brought us,” the girl spoke up, frowning. “And then we wouldn’t have to risk our lives at all.”

“Ah, but then you would take away our lives,” Dazai cooed, fluttering his fingers faintly as he crossed his arms. Chuuya looked at him, agape. “Are you sure you’re ready for the moral burden of that?”

“I’ve killed before,” she responded blankly. “It’s not difficult.”

Dazai’s eyes widened imperceptibly at that statement. Anyone else would not have caught it at all, but Chuuya had become so attuned to the other boy’s reactions that it was strikingly obvious to him. “Ah, how sad. Chuuya, now!”

Sighing, Chuuya rolled his eyes at the terribly disguised signal, before elbowing Akutagawa sharply in the ribs and ducking underneath the boy’s flailing arms. Simultaneously, the Mackerel swept out the girl’s legs from underneath her with a taekwondo move Chuuya was certain he’d never taught him, before disarming her with a kick to the wrist that sent the knife spiralling away. 

Chuuya lunged forward and grabbed Akutagawa’s wrist as he made to aim the gun, forcing to the side and squeezing until his fingers opened and the firearm dropped out. He caught it reflexively, examined it in distaste, and then tossed it to Dazai. 

“You are weak,” Dazai announced brightly to the children. 

Shoving him away, Chuuya turned to face them with his palms up.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he said gently. “So why don’t you cooperate? First, tell me the girl’s name.”

“I’m Gin,” she said. “Akutagawa Gin. Ryuu is my older brother.”

“Ah, siblings? That’s nice. Dazai here also has siblings. He has a little brother.”

“Who’s a fat bitch and the literal bane of my existence,” Dazai muttered.

“Shut your mouth,” Chuuya said pleasantly, not even turning to look at him. The siblings exchanged confused glances but did not speak. “So, as you can now see, we are the ones who have control over this. You have two options: one, you cooperate, or two, we throw you out into the zombie-infested mall.”

Naturally, he wasn’t quite heartless enough to do that. They were just kids, after all. If they refused to cooperate, his plan was to just knock them out and leave them tied up here, while he and Dazai went to fetch the rest of the supplies they needed. 

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to scare them a little bit. 

“We’ll cooperate,” Akutagawa said desolately as Gin nodded, her eyes downcast. “What do you want us to do?”

Chuuya hesitated. He hadn’t actually thought that far, despite being confident in their assent. “Let me discuss that with Dazai first.”

“We should use them as zombie bait to clear our way to the next level,” he said loudly. 

“No, we’re not,” Chuuya retorted, offering the siblings a wry smile. “That’s cruel.”

“This world is a cruel place, chibi. The only people we’re capable of protecting is ourselves.”

He raised both eyebrows, staring at Dazai from underneath his bangs. “I think I’m capable of protecting more than just myself, shitty mackerel. Even if this world is cruel, we should do all that we can to alleviate that.”

“Whatever. What do you suggest we do with them?”

Tilting his head to the side, Chuuya pondered upon it. “I think we should leave them here to guard the supplies while we fetch the rest of the things we need.”

“They’re not strong enough to kill zombies, if any of them break into here,” Dazai pointed out. “I don’t know how they survived this far, but it was most likely through running and hiding.”

“You’re wrong, Dazai-san,” Akutagawa interrupted. Chuuya raised his eyebrows at the honorific. “I’ve killed zombies before. I don’t have swords like Chuuya-san but you don’t really need such big weapons — a gun and a dagger are enough. And anyway, why don’t you take us with you? Eight hands are better than four, right?”

“I respect that you’ve managed to take down some of those monsters,” Chuuya replied, “but there is no way in hell that you’re coming with us. You’re like ten years old!”

“I’m thirteen,” the boy grumbled. “And Gin’s eleven. We can handle ourselves.”

“Look, I understand that you’ve gone through a lot,” he said, kneeling so that they were eye-to-eye. “But that doesn’t mean you’re equipped to handle the severity that this situation requires. Stay here, Akutagawa-kun. Guarding supplies is important as well, you know?”

The boy opened his mouth to protest, but Dazai cut in before he could. 

“Chuuya’s being kind,” he said. “Kinder than I would’ve been. You should just take it, boy.”

Akutagawa nodded, ashen-faced. “Of course, Dazai-san.”

“Oh, and by the way,” Dazai continued cheerfully, “if we come back to find our supplies gone, I promise you that I will hunt you to the ends of this earth and place a very torturous death upon you.”

Sighing, Chuuya didn’t even bother to reprimand him this time. To an extent, Dazai was right in the thought behind his actions, even if the way he went about it was morally doubtful. It would be deeply irritating if those kids ran away with the items they had worked so hard to gather. 

“You guys should have some of the snacks in there,” he encouraged. “It’s good to get your energy back. But yeah, like Dazai said, if you try to take more than necessary or if you run away with it, we’re going to come after you, okay?”

The siblings agreed meekly. Chuuya leaned over and tapped Dazai’s shoulder, gesturing towards the door. “Let’s go.”

***

“Kouyou-san,” Mori greeted her as she entered his office. “Report?”

“Most of the Yokohama coast is under our control,” she said. “The more in-land parts are currently being fought over by gangs of survivors desperate for survival, however the Flags have guaranteed us that they will be dealt with promptly as soon as they finish their current mission regarding the trade of the goods we took from abandoned stores.”

She cocked her head to the side as Mori sighed deeply, tapping his fingers against the flute of champagne resting in his palm. “Boss?”

“The Flags,” Mori murmured. “Specifically, Albatross. He handles the jewellery trade, doesn't he?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, unsure of where the conversation was going.”

Mori beckoned for her to come closer and she did so, watching as he bent down to slide a drawer open from his desk. He took out two thick leather-bound tomes, which she recognised as accounting books. 

“Take a look at this,” he said as he flipped open to about halfway on one and slid it across to her. “These are the accounts of all the jewellery exports and imports made for the past month or so.”

Gazing down at the numbers, Kouyou felt her vision blur at the tiny lines of black. “Some of these are missing.”

“That’s due to the anarchy that occurred at the start of the apocalypse. Albatross only recently started entering in numbers again. Notice anything about it?”

She traced her finger down to the last two completed entries, about a day ago, then looked back at the ones before that. “The gap in profit is huge.”

Mori reached over and slammed the book shut. “Exactly.” He let the implication of his words hang in the air between them. 

“But that’s not necessarily the result of foul play,” Kouyou pointed out, feeling the strange need to defend her coworker. “Is it really so surprising that some wares were lost during that time, given the very odd week we’ve been having?”

“It wouldn’t be,” Mori acknowledged, lifting up the second book. “If not for these accounts.”

Carefully, he lifted it open, wary of the loose-leaf sheets resting inside. “We transport the silks on the same ships as the jewellery. Hirotsu keeps track of those, right?”

“Right.”

“In that case, look at this.”

Kouyou peered over his shoulder, glancing at the many columns while a headache built steadily behind her temples. She felt a distinct sense of shock as she registered the numbers. “There still exists a profit gap, but it’s nowhere as big.”

“Exactly,” Mori said. “After seeing that, would you still defend Albatross?”

Biting her lip, Kouyou dug her nails into her palm. “It still doesn’t make sense, to an extent. Albatross is no fool. He never would’ve let such obvious disparity pass right under his nose.”

“You overestimate him, Kouyou-san,” her boss said, his tone slightly chiding. “He’s one of the highest up in the Port Mafia. No one has questioned his actions for a very long time; he probably doesn’t expect his records to be under any scrutiny. That’s why he has a lackey to calculate the profits — he considers himself above it and as such does not check the work being done for him.”

“Oh dear,” she murmured.

“Oh dear indeed, for both myself and for him. If I had not received an impulse to glance over our accounts, I would not have caught him at all.”

“So, what are you going to do?” Kouyou asked, suppressing her trepidation.

Mori peered at her briefly, before reaching into the depths of his coat and passing her a gun. His eyes glittered as he spoke. 

“The better question is,” he said, “what are you going to do?”

A shudder wracked its way through Kouyou’s body. Mori gave her a sympathetic look but she ignored it staunchly, not wanting to be treated with pity. 

“I kill him,” she said emotionlessly. “I deal out justice in the way that is customary of the Port Mafia.”

“Of course,” the man drawled. “So go. I command you.”

Bowing, Kouyou retreated out into the corridor and closed the door behind her. The Flags famously entertained themselves in The Old World, a restaurant located in one of Yokohama’s more remote residential areas. It would be such a trek if she went there on foot, not to mention the zombies milling about on every street. 

Kouyou sighed, irritated with these circumstances, and then headed downstairs to find Kaiji Motojirou. 

As expected, he was lounging about in a deserted cubicle, clicking aimlessly through the computer that a Day worker had left behind. Kouyou walked up to him and casually placed her sword against the curve of his neck. 

Kaiji let out a cry of shock, whirling around. He relaxed as he glimpsed Kouyou’s face. 

“Ozaki-san,” he said, trying to subtly shuffle away from her blade. “Do you need something?”

“The Port Mafia doesn’t house you and pay you to relax for the entire day,” she told him stiffly. 

“Mori-sama isn’t investing any more money into my lab!” Kaiji complained. “What else am I supposed to do? I’ve already used up all the existing materials.” 

“I’m sure you can make yourself useful elsewhere,” she said. “Such as now, for instance. I need a driver.”

The man brightened up to a ridiculous degree, hopping out of the chair with a large smile. “You want the service of the Lemon-mobile?”

“I did not buy you that car just for you to turn it into the monstrosity that it has become. But yes, I do need to use it.”

“Anything for the woman who brought me into a crime syndicate!” he chirped, sweeping his arms together to make a dramatic bow. “Follow me!”

The two of them took the elevator down to the garage where most of the company’s vehicles were parked. Kouyou brought the sleeve of her kimono to her nose, saving herself from the stench of oil and metal as they entered. 

Kaiji’s Lemon-mobile was a Mini Cooper that she had gifted him upon his joining of the Port Mafia, more as a joke than anything else. It had started out as a sensible shade of crimson, before the man had attacked it determinedly with a spray-can of bright yellow paint and turned it into the abomination that it was now.

For a moment, Kouyou fervently wished that she could take one of the company cars instead, even though they were all painted with ‘Mori Corporations’ in ugly navy on the side. That feeling only intensified as she caught the eye of some of her subordinates, who tried very hard to hide their laughs at the sight of their graceful superior stepping into a wheeled lemon. 

“Don’t you normally ask someone else to drive you places?” Kaiji asked as they sat down and strapped themselves in.

“Normally, my subordinates drive me places. But lately they’ve all been so busy cleaning up the mess left over by the start of the apocalypse that they hardly have time for such mundane tasks.”

Kaiji wrinkled his nose. “You don’t have a designated personal secretary for matters like this? Even I do, and you’re much higher on the pecking order than I am.”

“I don’t like leaving matters in other people’s hands,” she told him. 

“And yet, oddly enough, you’re fine with being driven instead of the one driving. If someone were to kill you, they would only have to wait until you called for a chauffeur.”

“Keep saying things like that and I’ll drag my subordinates out of Mori’s orders just to have one of them cut off your tongue. Or perhaps I’ll even give you the honour of doing it myself. Now drive, Kaiji-kun.”

Visibly gulping, the man pushed up his sunglasses and nodded. “Yes ma’am.”

Inevitably, however, he ended up talking again as the garage door lifted for them with a beckon of Kouyou’s hand and they sped out into the street. 

“Have you ever thought of getting a driver’s license?” Kaiji blurted out, in the way that he did when a question had been pressing against his lips for a very long time. 

“Many times,” she replied, and did not elaborate further. Kaji, wisely, did not press. Instead, he waved his phone around with one hand until it connected to the car’s radio. Loud rock music started to blare out. Kouyou’s hands snaked around to cover her ears, hard, as Kaiji started chanting along to the lyrics. 

“Noise attracts zombies,” Kouyou informed him. 

“Let them come,” he said dismissively, patting his pockets. “I’ve been wanting to try those improved grenades of mine for a while now. It’ll be the perfect opportunity.”

Kouyou huffed. “Maybe you should do that when you’re not carrying a Port Mafia executive in your car.”

Kaiji paled and turned down the volume. 

Twenty minutes later, he parked the car carefully outside The Old World, turning off the ignition. 

“Tell me, Ozaki-san,” he said, his voice more serious than she’d ever heard it so far today. “Is this— I mean, you don’t usually seek out the Flags, so is this an execution?”

Hesitating, Kouyou considered lying. But what would be the point? Sooner or later, everyone would find out. 

“Yes,” she said. 

Letting out a bemused scoff, Kaiji leaned back in his seat and crossed his hands behind his head. “Not even a trial?”

“Mori-san has made his judgement. And you should know how unwise it is to publicly expose a powerful person as a traitor — it makes Mori-san look weak, as if he cannot keep order.”

“Person? Singular? Is it not all of them, together?”

Kouyou casually drew out one of the knives hidden in every crease of her kimono, polishing it carefully with the hem of her gown. “As far as we know, it’s only Albatross. With that being said, I would be completely unsurprised if it turned out that they were all working in tandem.”

“Albatross?” Kaiji echoed disbelievingly. “He betrayed the Port Mafia? He’s been here even longer than you!”

She slid the knife back into its hiding place. “The Port Mafia of the past nine days is not the same as the Port Mafia of the past few decades. It is not so surprising that people would change along with the syndicate.”

“I did not think that the zombies would have caused such drastic things to occur,” Kaiji admitted. “To be honest, I’ve barely noticed any difference between now and before.”

Kouyou rapped him sharply on the forehead with her knuckles. “If that’s the case, it’s time to open your eyes, Bomb-boy. Things will only escalate from here.”

Reaching over, she unlocked the car and stepped outside. 

“Wait!” Kaiji called after her. “Are you sure you don’t need backup? The Flags aren’t exactly untrained idiots.”

“Have some faith,” Kouyou replied. She didn’t wait to hear his response before slamming the door shut and making her way towards the entrance of The Old World. 

She didn’t bother knocking and opted instead to spear through the lock with a smooth plunge of her blade through wood, kicking it the rest of the way open. Stepping over the threshold, Kouyou expected to hear the sound of mirth that usually filled the air when the Flags were in session. 

Instead, all she caught was silence. 

That was unsurprising. If Albatross had any sense, he would’ve fled already from this place; but then again, that was a paradox in and of itself. No one with sense would try to flee from the Port Mafia. 

“Oh my,” came a distinctive voice from behind her, “I see our most flamboyant executioner has arrived.”

Her sword was out in front of her before she had even properly registered the words, spearing elegantly towards the spot where Albatross had just been. It missed his heart and instead hit the sleeve of his coat, pinning him to the wooden wall. 

Albatross jerked away, wincing at the sound of tearing fabric. 

“I loved that coat!” he complained. “Did you really have to ruin it?”

“I’m sorry,” Kouyou replied, replacing her sword and taking out the pistol that Mori had given her. “But I plan on ruining it a little bit more.”

The man stared down the firearm’s barrel, an odd look in his eye. “You’re not even going to ask why?”

“Why what?” she asked, before her brain caught up. “Why you committed treason?”

“Precisely that,” Albatross said, flashing her one of his famous smirks. “Aren’t you at least slightly curious?”

She thought about it for a moment. 

“No,” Kouyou said, and lunged towards him again, pulling the trigger as she did so. Neither of them even bat an eye at the thunderous bang that echoed through the room as the bullet lodged itself in the spot next to Albatross’ ear. Hissing in frustration, Kouyou reloaded quickly. Albatross had been infamous for his almost superhuman ability to dodge everything launched his way; bullets and accountability being the two most notable. 

“Your aim,” he murmured as he darted away, “has never been good.”

“Zip it, Birdy,” she retorted, stalking towards him. 

“I’d rather not,” he replied. “The capacity to speak implies that I’m still breathing.”

Tightening her grip on the gun, Kouyou spat at his feet. “Not for long.”

“Oh no,” Albatross said mockingly, throwing his hands up into the air. “I’m so terrified!”

Then, he ran. 

Spewing curses, Kouyou pursued him around the tight spaces and winding staircases of The Old World, feeling foolishly like a child chasing her sibling in a bout of immature fury. Albatross made almost no sound as he flitted from corner to corner, much like his namesake, but regardless, she had little trouble keeping up. 

“Isn’t this tiring you, Golden Demon?” he called from somewhere up ahead. Kouyou counted this as their fifth lap around the bar; she stopped abruptly and changed direction, slipping from room to room to come face-to-face with him near the entrance. 

“Not at all,” she said. Albatross balked at the sight of her standing before him, before turning tail and pelting in the other direction. 

Kouyou slipped a dagger from her pocket and flung it at the door he was aiming for, the momentum of the weapon slamming it shut. 

She had only tolerated so much running for the sake of memorising the place’s layout, after all. 

Albatross swivelled slowly to face her, the relaxed grin never slipping from his face. 

“It’s moments like this that make me remember how competent you are,” he told her. “Alas, despite all your skill, you are blinded by your loyalty.”

“Be quiet. Traitors do not get to speak.”

“You have as much bloodthirst as is needed to make you a good mafioso, but not the cynicism required to make you a great one,” the man continued. 

“Do not patronise me,” Kouyou hissed. “Go to your death silently and honourably.”

“Perhaps I will. But before I do so, tell me this: do you really believe that Mori has nothing to do with the events of right now?”

For a moment she faltered, caught off guard by the strange question. The arm pointing the pistol at Albatross dipped ever so slightly — but for him, that was enough. Quick as lightning he took out a flash grenade from within his waistcoat and tossed it towards her. Kouyou’s eyes widened as she registered the khaki bottle bouncing on the ground, and instinctively she dove for cover. 

When the dust settled and the white sparks faded from her vision, she crawled out from underneath the table where she had sheltered herself and looked around. It only confirmed what she already knew. 

Albatross was gone.

***

The journey up to the third level was by no means uneventful, but even so Dazai found it strangely peaceful. The only major fighting that had happened was the initial horde of zombies that had greeted them outside the door of the storage room; but they had fled those easily enough, shoving the nearest ones away and then pelting up the stairs. 

“You know,” he said, panting lightly as they arrived at the kitchenware store, “I think you have a reputation.”

Chuuya turned to him, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“Have you noticed that the zombies tend to avoid you?” Dazai asked. “When they see the two of us, they still attack. But most of the time, their efforts are directed at me.”

“It’s probably because they can smell how weak you are,” Chuuya said impassively. 

“Ha ha. No, don’t you think it’s slightly more than that?”

“What, you think the zombies can communicate? They’re dead, for fuck’s sake. How are they meant to talk to each other? In fact, how do they even register anything?”

Before Dazai could think of a reply, a crash from behind them caused them both to jump, whipping their heads around. A section of the roof had fallen and crashed to the floor, leaving a wide gap in the ceiling. He narrowed his eyes and peered at it, registering blue skies and white clouds and… a mop of grey hair? 

“Go, go!” he muttered to Chuuya, shoving him into the store. “We’re being watched.”

Chuuya’s eyes widened in confusion and shock, but he did not resist as they hurried into the store and ducked behind the nearest shelf, pressing themselves flat against it. 

“What is going on?” Chuuya hissed as Dazai sneaked glances around the side. Though the broken roof was still glaringly visible, the man that he had caught sight of before had vanished. 

“I saw someone standing there on the edges where the glass collapsed,” he said. 

“And you automatically think that they’re following us?” his partner scoffed. “What if it’s just a survivor who stepped on a particularly fragile piece of panelling?”

Dazai pursed his lips. “That’s completely unreasonable. This building has stood for decades, it does not simply choose to break now. There was foul play here, I’m sure of it.”

Shaking his head, Chuuya sighed. “I’m going to trust your judgement on this. Better to be safe than sorry. So, what do we do now?”

“What we originally came here to do,” he replied. “Gather a blade-sharpener for your katanas, and a couple of knives as well while we’re at it.”

“When we’re done with this, we should head back to School,” Chuuya suggested, shifting on his feet. “The sharpener is good enough for now, but in the long term it will only damage my swords, which are easily our most important weapons. The School has a martial arts center near it, where I train; they’ll have specialised sharpeners there.”

“It’s cute to see you nerding out about weapons,” Dazai teased, receiving a pinch in return. “Sure, that makes sense. Let’s get out of here first.”

As Chuuya led him further inside the shop, straightening out to examine the array of blade-sharpeners and miscellaneous knives available. Dazai moved almost instinctively to press his back against Chuuya, scanning the space behind him for any threats. He searched for the shine of that grey hair he had spotted earlier, but there was no sign of it. 

Even so, there was a creeping feeling along the back of his neck. Someone was here. He was sure of it.

Dazai inhaled sharply as he caught the sound of footfalls coming closer, startling Chuuya, and grabbed for his gun just as four figures sprung out of the shadows between aisles.  

Before he knew it, Chuuya was facing forward at his side, the metallic squeal of his katanas unmistakable as he drew out both from where they were resting in sheathes around his waist. 

Hefting it higher, Chuuya prepared to attack. Dazai rested his finger on the trigger and steadied his aim. 

“Woah, woah, woah!” one of the silhouettes said, coming into view. “Don’t shoot! We’re friendly.”

Dazai studied each of their faces as the light was cast upon it. The man in the lead, who had spoken, was dressed in black-and-white from his coat to his shoes; even his hair was streaked obsidian while the rest of it remained pale. It reminded him of the person he had seen earlier, but it took little consideration for him to realise they were not the same. The others following closely behind were similarly odd-looking — for fuck’s sake, one of them had an IV drip slung over his shoulder!

“Who are you?” he called. 

“You can call me Piano Man,” the man said flippantly. “This is my crew, The Flags. But honestly, that’s not really relevant at the moment, because the more important question is the one I have for you.”

He approached slowly, heels clacking ominously on the floor. “Who are you two, and why is the Port Mafia after you?”

Port Mafia. That name reverberated in Dazai’s skull, bouncing around in its hollow interior. It dredged up memories he thought he had buried: his fourteenth birthday, tension fraught in his family as it always was. His father had been called away by a servant of theirs to greet a political guest who had arrived suddenly, his presence filling up the parlour as he entered. 

The other attendees around Dazai had blanched, their whispers slithering into his ears. 

Mori Ougai of the Port Mafia, they told him. That is in very poor taste for your son’s birthday, Tsushima Genemon. 

He had found out later that this Mori person had turned up unexpectedly; and perhaps if he were there for slightly longer he would’ve been able to gain more information, but his mother had gripped his shoulder so hard that it hurt and declared to the rest of the guests that the party would be moving elsewhere. 

Raising his head, he opened his mouth to speak, but Chuuya got there first. 

“The Port Mafia?” he said. “What’s that?”

The Flags, as they had called themselves, exchanged troubled looks. The man nearest to Piano Man observed them darkly. 

“What do you say, Doc?” Piano Man asked him. 

“Kid’s telling the truth,” the person named Doc said. “He really has no idea.”

“But this one does,” another of The Flags said, jerking his chin at Dazai. “Did you see the way he flinched? Only someone who knows exactly what the PM is would have such a reaction.”

“Lippmann,” Dazai said curtly, recognising the distinctive beauty for which the actor was known. Lippmann looked unabashedly pleased at being named, flashing him one of trademark smirks. 

“Wait— hold on,” Chuuya said. “What’s this about? Dazai, what do you know about this ‘Port Mafia’?”

“Not much,” he replied, keeping his eyes on The Flags. “Only that they engage in highly illegal activity, and that three years back one of their members visited my father in his office.”

“That’s already more than what most people know,” Piano Man said. “One of our employees visited your father? Does he work in politics or business?”

Dazai paused, considered the benefits and consequences of telling them the truth, and eventually nodded his head. 

“Now that you mention it, he does look oddly familiar,” Lippmann mused. 

The four of them fell into a contemplative silence as they regarded Dazai. A few moments passed in that tense silence before suddenly, the head of the man who had not yet spoken snapped up. 

“Hey, what’s your name?” he said roughly. 

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business,” Dazai retorted. 

“Kid, it’s important,” the man said, fiddling with the cigar in his mouth. “Please.”

Chuuya elbowed him in the side, azure eyes soft with concern. “Just tell him, Mackerel. If you do then maybe we’ll be able to work out why this Mafia is after us.”

Dazai thought he already knew, but he obliged anyway. “Dazai Osamu. My name is Dazai Osamu.”

“Does that ring a bell for you, Iceman?” Doc asked. “‘Cause it doesn’t for me.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t,” Iceman replied. “You spend too much time wallowing in bed and not quite enough time learning about the world.”

“Shut up,” the other said mildly, “and tell us what conclusion you’ve come to.”

Iceman sighed, taking out the cigar to spin it around in his fingers. Dazai watched the swaying of the emanated smoke, strangely hypnotised by its movements.

“This is Tsushima Shuuji, son of Tsushima Genemon. He goes by Dazai Osamu.”

Oh , Dazai thought blankly as he watched The Flag’s countenances morph into horrified understanding. Well at least I told Chuuya some of this first, before strangers decided to do it for me.

“Jesus Christ,” Lippman said finally. “Well, at least now we know why Mori’s after him.”

“And why he sent Ace to get him,” Doc muttered. “Fuck, it makes so much sense.”

“Ace?” Dazai wondered out loud. “Does he have grey hair by any chance?”

At those words, Piano Man broke into loud peals of laughter. “Someone agrees with me! He says it’s ash-blonde, but I say it’s all ash, no blonde. Makes him look a whole lot older than he is.”

“Can we get back on track here?” Iceman cut in. “He knows what Ace looks like. How?”

That last question was directed at Dazai, who straightened his spine against the force of the man’s stare. 

“I saw him,” he said simply. “He was standing on the broken roof.”

Right at that moment, they caught the sound of an explosion coming from not so far off. Distant panic materialised in Piano Man’s dark eyes; he beckoned to the two of them, a clear sign to follow. 

“Let’s go. You need to come with us right now.”

“And if we don’t?” Chuuya asked. 

“Then you’ve all but signed your own death warrant,” Iceman said shortly. “Let’s go.”

***

“You know, when I first heard Ace’s reports, I was shocked,” said the woman who was pressing a blade against Paul’s throat. “Foreigners? In a restricted area of Japan? The two most famous Transcendents, no less? The situation’s very odd.”

“What do you want?” he grumbled, casually reaching for the firearm in his pocket. 

“Oh no, I wouldn’t do that,” the woman murmured. “If you fire, it’s a race of time; will your bullet hit me faster, or can I slit your throat before then?”

Paul sighed, withdrawing his hand. “Where’s Arthur?”

“My colleagues are dealing with him,” she said. “I apologise for our abrupt methods. We’re actually here because we have a proposal for the two of you.”

“If you wanted to make a proposal I could agree to, perhaps you shouldn’t have dragged the two of us out of bed. Do you know how difficult it is to recover from jetlag? I’m afraid you have set my recovery time back by at least a few hours.”

“Silence,” the woman commanded. “By the time I finish explaining this proposal, it will not matter to you how uncomfortable our methods were.”

He rolled his eyes, making sure that she could clearly see the gesture. “By all means then, continue.”

“Wise decision,” she said, ignoring his derision. “After doing some research, my affiliates have determined the reason why Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud would grace our humble city with their presence.”

She leaned in, red hair so similar to Chuuya’s falling over his face. “You’re looking for someone, aren’t you? More specifically, you’re looking for Nakahara Chuuya, your son.”

Paul couldn’t stop himself from stiffening. That was the only confirmation the woman needed and she leaned back with a satisfied smile. “I don’t have a child myself, but I do imagine that a parent such as yourself would be willing to do anything to retrieve your son. Am I right?”

“If you have taken him hostage, I swear—”

“Oh no, nothing like that,” she said dismissively. “To be honest, we don’t know where he is either. But the point is, we could find out. As you already know, the Port Mafia is easily the most influential entity here right now. If Nakahara-kun is still in Yokohama, we will be able to find him. Of course, there is something we would like in return.”

“Isn’t there always?” he muttered. “Fine. Name your price.”

The woman took away her blade to fish out a crumpled piece of paper from inside her kimono. She dangled it in front of him, allowing Paul to take in the five people illustrated upon it. 

“The Flags,” she explained. “Criminals, of course; money-launderers and illegal traders, like we all are. But more importantly, traitors on the run from the Mafia. We have sent out our own hitmen, but they are too experienced to be taken down by any of them. So, we need a variable that they will be unable to predict — that is, you and your husband.”

“What you’re telling me is, we take out The Flags and you will find Chuuya for us.”

“Precisely!” the woman beamed. “Now you get it!”

“But how do you know they’re still in Yokohama? If they’ve travelled elsewhere…”

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that. Once a mafioso, always a mafioso; they will be unable to truly break free of their roots. So, what do you say?”

Paul shrugged. They were criminals, after all, so committing a few more murders seemed like no big deal. Finding Chuuya was the most important thing. 

“Sure.”

Chapter Text

The Flags made to lead them out of the shopping center, but Chuuya stopped them with a fist in Piano Man’s coat. 

“We have supplies stored in the closet on the level below,” he said as the older man turned around, “along with two survivors who are waiting for us. We need to go to them.”

“Kid, I don’t think there’s time,” Piano Man said. 

“We have to,” Chuuya insisted. “They’re just children, younger than Dazai and myself. They won’t be able to survive unless we go back.”

“You can’t save everyone,” Piano Man said. 

“And sometimes, you have to try,” he said stubbornly, looking up at them. “Please.”

The rest of the Flags turned their head to Piano Man, evidently awaiting his judgement. After a few seconds of silence, he sighed heavily and nodded. “Very well. I’m going to give the two of you five minutes to run back and grab them, and if you’re not back by that time we are going to leave without you.”

“You’re not scared of us escaping?” Dazai asked. 

Lippman snorted, a loud, sarcastic sound. “We don’t need you brats at all. It just happened that we were passing through when we caught sight of the situation you’re currently in.”

“No more talking,” Iceman cut in. “Time is running out. Five minutes, kid, that’s all you’ve got before you forfeit your life.”

Chuuya nodded, biting his lip. “Dazai, you should stay here. This mafia’s after you, not me, so if I don’t make it back on time you should go with them.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Dazai said, and then pelted off without him. 

And that was how they found themselves stuck in a horrifyingly conspicuous truck, the Akutagawa siblings crammed next to them while the Flags were sprawled in the front row, seated in a way that showed blatant disregard for all driving laws. 

“Y’know,” Lippmann said, turning back to study Chuuya shamelessly, “I have some respect for what you did there, choosing to go back for these babies. Some sense of selflessness is difficult to find generally, but especially nowadays.”

“Really?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “I thought it was just a decent thing to do.”

Lippmann chuckled, flashing pearly teeth. “Sure. That doesn’t stop it from being something that most people wouldn’t even think of. Hey, what was your name again?”

Chuuya blinked. “Nakahara Chuuya, but please just call me Chuuya.”

“What, don’t like your last name?” Doc asked, alarmingly shrewd. 

“I grew up in France,” he said after a brief hesitation. “White people, y’know? They use first names.”

There was an uncomfortable silence; he could practically feel each of the Flags raising their eyebrows at what obviously felt like a cover story. It didn’t fly over his head that all of them had made the same connection as Dazai in an almost shorter amount of time — before meeting any of them, he hadn’t realised that there was so much to learn in silence. 

“Fair enough,” Lippmann responded, a very clear ‘drop it’ edge to his tone. “For a while, when I first moved to Japan, I preferred that as well. But now, I can barely remember it.”

“The rest of us aren’t European but it’s still somehow the same,” Piano Man chimed in. “We’ve been using these nicknames for so long that we probably wouldn’t respond if someone called out our birth names.”

He smiled, fiddling with his fingers. “That’s fair enough, I suppose. Dazai and I also have nicknames for each other — he’s Mackerel, and I’m Slug.”

“Oh?” Iceman said, raising his brows. “What is the origin of those? They’re probably not appearance-based like ours are.”

“They are appearance-based for Chuuya,” Dazai said smugly. “Don’t you agree? He looks exactly like a slug.”

“Shut up,” Chuuya threatened. “I swear to God, I’m really going to kill you this time—”

Suddenly, a thump upon the truck’s roof cut off his next words. Chuuya shot Dazai a look of unrestrained panic, reaching for his katanas. 

“Hold your swords,” Piano Man ordered, keeping an eye on him through the side mirrors. Strangely enough, despite the repeated bangs that could be heard above them, the man had a smile on his face. “This is a friend.”

“A friend?” Dazai said incredulously. “On the roof? Are you sure it’s not a stray zombie?”

“Zombies aren’t the only thing that could land on roofs,” Iceman said vaguely. “So can birds.”

At that moment, Lippmann reached over to roll down the tinted windows. Chuuya spotted a flash of bright blonde hair and faux fur as someone slid through with the howling winds and landed on Lippmann’s lap, whooping with adrenaline. 

“Albatross,” the actor said fondly as the figure righted himself. “I see you have managed to escape unscathed.”

“Haven’t I always?” the man named Albatross said. “Honestly, I think my awesomeness deserves a promotion as the Head of the Flags, replacing the old instrument over here. Evading Kouyou is no easy feat!”

“True enough,” Piano Man said mildly. “Hands up if anyone wants Albatross to replace me as leader.”

No hands were raised. 

For a moment, Chuuya feared that some kind of miniature civil war would erupt, but instead the five men burst into laughter from some inside joke he wasn’t privy to. 

“Chuuya, Dazai, siblings,” Lippmann declared over the noise. “Meet the final member of our little entourage; I present to you, Albatross!”

Lifting his head, Chuuya met eyes with the man as he turned to look at them, and then instantly recoiled. 

“I know you,” he said, half to himself.

Albatross shrugged, offering him an apologetic smile. “I’m afraid not. We’ve never met.”

“Are you sure?” Chuuya frowned, tugging at his jacket. “I could swear I’ve seen you before…”

“Maybe on the street?” Albatross suggested. “I do like wandering around Yokohama.”

“Yes, that’s probably it,” he replied, although he sounded unconvinced even to himself. “You do have a memorable appearance.”

Albatross leaned back, a grin splitting his face. “Hey, thanks kid!”

“Are you certain he means it in a good way?” Doc asked. “I mean, you aren’t exactly Coco Chanel, with the way you dress.”

“Shut it, Dora the Explorer,” Albatross retorted easily, giving Chuuya a wink as he tried to choke back his laughs. “The mushroom-head doesn’t deserve to say anything about fashion.”

Enraptured, Chuuya listened to their easygoing banter as the trip went on. It somehow reminded him of his own conversations with Shirase, if only ramped up in the heat; the other boy had always been a little bit sensitive, after all, when it came to being teased. 

There was an odd sense of nostalgia bubbling up inside him. He longed for the days that he would spend lounging in the sunshine with Shirase and Yuan and a couple of their other friends, trading conversations across from each other and giggling at shared jokes. 

He remembered suddenly that Dazai was sometimes there as well — always hanging on the fringes, snickering more at them than with them, but there nonetheless. Subtly he looked at the other boy, who had his head propped on one hand and was staring out the window. He could feel the warmth of his thigh close to his own, present but not quite, barely brushing his skin. Knowing Dazai, that was intentional. 

“We’re here,” Piano Man said, jolting out of his thoughts as the truck pulled into the parking lot behind what appeared to be a large warehouse, constructed from red bricks and overlooking the port. He got out of the driver’s seat and gallantly opened the door for the rest of them, making a sweeping gesture with his hands as they stepped outside, blinking at the sun. Chuuya went to the trunk and grabbed their bag of supplies, shielding it from Akutagawa’s hungry eyes. 

“What’s this place?” Dazai asked. He lifted up a hand to shield his eyes from the glaring afternoon sun, surveying the decrepit space around them with some kind of disdain. “Is this where you’ve been hiding from the Port Mafia after betraying them?”

Chuuya tensed involuntarily as Doc regarded Dazai, the older man’s eyes frosty. Of course, he had come to that conclusion himself; why else would the Flags be so obviously fleeing, while taking Dazai with them? Clearly, they had betrayed that organisation and were now looking to escape the consequences. 

“Calm down,” Lippmann said jovially, slapping Doc on the back. “We haven’t exactly been subtle about it.”

Dazai nodded, smirking slightly. “So what will you do with me now? Sell me to this Mori person in exchange for your freedom?”

Chuuya turned to him, agape. 

“What?” he demanded. “Will you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Piano Man said. “It’s a reasonable conclusion, but given your lack of knowledge about our current circumstances, it’s not the correct one. We can discuss this more later, but first, we need to get into the warehouse."

He set off at brisk pace towards the set of buildings, gesturing for the rest of them to follow. Chuuya pulled Dazai back as he stepped forward. 

“Are you insane?" he hissed. “You suspected that they might be using you from the beginning, right?”

“Naturally,” Dazai replied. “It’s only because you’re stupid that you didn’t come to the same conclusion.”

“Shut up,” Chuuya said. “You knew that, and you’re still going with them?”

The brunette looked at him with a strange expression. “This is the only way to keep us safe. That man up on the roof was, as they said, probably a member of the Port Mafia. He would’ve come after both of us if we tried to leave the building, and most likely would’ve been able to kill you and capture me. The Flags, on the other hand, made no such move. They left you alive and invited us to go with them. Even if this is a death trap, people coming after me is inevitable, given who my father is. Your survival, on the other hand, is not.”

“So you went with them to keep me alive?” Chuuya asked disbelievingly. 

“Do not make such stupid assumptions,” Dazai said, and then sped off. 

Scoffing, Chuuya smiled slightly to himself. The Mackerel was growing attached, that was for certain. He would never have made such an effort a week ago. Then he grew self-conscious of his thoughts and the warmth bubbling in his chest — pinching his arm decisively, he cleared his throat for no one’s benefit and hurried after Dazai. 

The inside of the warehouse seemed at first glance to be rather spacious, sparsely decorated with wooden crates and piles of dusty furniture. 

“Home, sweet home,” Albatross said, spreading his arms out wide. “Welcome to the hiding place of the only gang to have successfully escaped the Port Mafia!”

Lippmann elbowed him. “Shut it. You’re going to jinx us.”

Albatross only laughed, twirling around in an exaggerated manner. Chuuya found himself coming to like the other man; his infectious energy reminded him of Shirase at his best, full of vivacious life and sparkling eyes. 

“It seems rather ordinary,” Akutagawa remarked, the first words he had said for the past hour or so. This sort of pessimism seemed characteristic for him, from what Chuuya observed so far, but on this particular matter he had to agree with the younger boy. 

How were they meant to hide from a hypothetical attack in this wasteland of a building? 

However, Albatross’ grin did not slip. “Ah, you underestimate us, emo boy,” he said, tugging on Akutagawa’s uneven bangs. “Come, come.”

They were led to the very farthest corner of the space, where at first glance there seemed to be nothing but arbitrary stacks of boxes. Piano Man knelt down to the floorboards and fiddled around with it for a moment, running his fingers down the gaps in the wood. Eventually, Chuuya heard a small click; Piano Man stood back up, his face smug, and nudged the boxes lightly with his toe. 

There was a faint rumbling sound, before the stacks slid back along with a section of the floor to reveal a winding staircase that led into darkness. Chuuya peered warily into it, gaze following Albatross as he cheered and skipped down the steps. Shrugging, he tagged along behind him. 

Somewhere on the path the darkness ebbed out until they found themselves in a cozy room, lit with flickering lanterns upon the room and stuffed with beanbags. Upon further examination it seemed to be larger than what he had observed at first glance, with branching corridors leading into rooms labeled ‘food storage’ and ‘Doc’s med-lab’.

“Welcome to the real home,” Albatross said, sneaking up on him as he was busy gaping. The older man laid a hand on Chuuya’s shoulder and pulled him into a side hug. “Make yourself comfortable! What do kids your age like to eat nowadays? We have lots of biscuits in the food storage area.”

“Ah,” Chuuya said, unsure of how to respond to that. “Thank you.”

Albatross chuckled and slapped him on the back. “Loosen up, kid. You’re safe here. It might not look so, but we’ve rigged traps almost everywhere. No one can step in here without our explicit permission, whether it be zombies or the Port Mafia.”

That was reassuring, but nevertheless something still nagged at Chuuya, brought on wholly by Dazai’s words. 

“What do you want in return?” he blurted out after a brief moment of hesitation. “I mean, you’ve taken us in, offered to protect us and feed us — there has to be something you're after.”

Albatross lips lifted upwards. “Smart kid. Well, best we discuss that when the rest of them slowpokes make their way down here.”

“Who are you calling a slowpoke?” Doc grumbled, lugging his IV drip after him as he emerged with the rest of them in tow. Dazai looked particularly disgruntled, brushing spiderwebs from his hair as Lippmann cackled behind him. 

“More importantly, did I hear someone discussing motives?” Piano Man said mildly, walking over and plopping onto one of the beanbags. He gestured for the rest of them to sit. “Settle down, kids. Let’s discuss exactly why we brought you here.”

Chuuya made his way to Dazai, unconsciously pressing closer to his side as the gazes of the Flags turned to scrutinise them. He kept his hands casually close to the hilt of his katanas as they settled down against the carpeted floor, leaning against an ottoman. 

“No need to look so wary,” Iceman said. “The two of you are much more useful to us alive.”

“Comforting,” Dazai said, and he sounded as if he meant it. 

Piano Man settled his gaze upon him for a moment, before saying pensively, “You have the mind of your father.”

Chuuya felt the other boy tense beside him. “That’s hardly a compliment.”

“No, but it is. I can feel your rationality even from here, which is why I trust you’ll behave in the most sensible way.”

Dazai’s eyes narrowed. “In regards to the proposal you undoubtedly have for me?”

“I’m glad to see that you have caught up so quickly,” Piano Man said, all the childlike mischief before during his conversations with the rest of the Flags dissipating in an instant. Chuuya guessed that it was a direct reaction to the predatory nature of Dazai’s stare. 

He was suddenly reminded that despite the carefree appearance of the Flags, they were still part of what Dazai had told him on their brief journey to go fetch the Akutagawas — the Port Mafia, Japan’s largest and most notorious crime syndicate. 

Not to mention the information he had passed in tapped fingers and awkward signals they still haven’t fully figured out yet; that given their poise, the skill of their movements as they fought past the zombies in the mall, these men were not mere henchmen. 

E-x-e-c-u-t-i-v-e-s, Dazai had spelled out on his arm, fingers leaving trails of warmth where they made contact. Or close to it, at the very least.

“Now, about the proposal,” Piano Man continued, “You are right in the sense that we did bring you here with an express purpose. However, I don’t believe our reason to be a particularly malicious one.

He crouched forward, brushing hair out of his face. “The only thing we want is information. After all, we did not leave the Port Mafia on a whim — we did so with the overarching goal of taking it down.”

“May I ask why?” Dazai said. “Your life there must not have been uncomfortable.”

“You’re right,” Piano Man admitted with a laugh. “It was actually rather pleasant. But we stumbled across a discovery some time back that twisted our loyalties.”

Dazai raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”

“The Port Mafia actually aided Dostoevsky in his experiments,” he replied, sending a bolt of shock through Chuuya’s system. 

“I thought they fought against them,” he said, unable to contain his surprise. 

“That’s what most people think, and they would be right. In the beginning, the Port Mafia was one of the key actors that managed to prevent Dostoevsky’s army from going too far into Japan. In fact, they almost managed to banish them completely, before the old boss decided to strike a deal with Dostoevsky.”

“Hang on, the old boss?” Dazai interrupted. “Not Mori Ougai?”

“No, Mori-san didn’t come into power until after the war, but we have quarrels with him regardless. Those, my friend, are none of your concern, because even so our primary motive stays the same. We may be criminals, but at the very least we are patriotic ones. It goes against our morals to work as part of the group that helped tear Japan apart.”

Chuuya glanced over at Dazai. To him, this motivation sounded rather flimsy; hadn’t the Flags proclaimed themselves as terrible people just hours earlier? 

“And what’s my part to play in this?” Dazai asked. If he had any reservations, they did not show on his face. 

“Your father is part of the reasons why the Port Mafia has so much power in the government. So in order to take them down, the first thing we need to do is sever that connection. If you provide us with enough information about him and, subsequently, your family, we’ll be able to do so quite easily. In return, we’ll give you and your friends shelter, food and protection from the Mafia, should they try and come after you.”

Piano Man got to his feet after finishing his sentence. “We’ll give you some time to consider.”

“No,” Dazai said suddenly. “That would be unnecessary. I’m happy to work with you.”

“What?” Chuuya demanded, flabbergasted. “That’s your family you’re betraying!”

“Don’t comment on what you don’t understand,” Dazai said.

Chuuya grabbed his wrist, pulling him closer. “If you do this and they find out, you’ll lose them forever.”

“I’d rather have no family at all than the family I do have,” the other boy snapped. “Come on, Piano Man. Let’s talk business.”

***

The Flags lent them one of the spare rooms at the very end of the left-branching hallway. They could’ve chosen to stay in the larger one but stupid selfless Chuuya insisted that that be left for the kids, and dragged Dazai unrepentantly into a space that more so resembled a broom closet than an inhabitable bedroom. 

Dazai, disturbingly enough, was getting accustomed to closets.

Albatross helped them drag two dusty mattresses out of where they had been stewing for possibly years in Lippmann’s office — and that was where they sat now, Chuuya with his back to the wall and piercing blue eyes set straight on Dazai. 

He tried not to shy away at the gaze. 

“Do you want to exchange truths?” Chuuya spoke after a few minutes of silence. 

“I’m not sure there’s anything about you left that I want to know,” Dazai said. It was not a completely honest statement, but he could ignore his curiosity if it meant getting Chuuya off his back. 

“You sure?” the redhead said contemplatively. “How about why I only use my first name? Or the reason why I keep all my school badges even though they’re from a long time ago?”

That indeed was interesting. 

“I can already guess some of that,” he admitted. 

“Similarly, I too can half-guess your past,” Chuuya said softly, some uncharacteristic hesitation in his voice. Dazai hated that with a passion. Was he trying to be gentle? Tactful? What was the need for such pointless things? “I do read the news, you know.”

“Oh,” he managed to say. 

“I just want to hear it from you. Is that so hard? The world has gone to shit, Dazai. What’s the point of more secrets?”

“The world will not stay that way forever,” Dazai said. “It will bounce back, just as it has always done. And when that happens, I—”

I will regret telling you, he didn’t say. 

“You think I would use it against you?” Chuuya asked, as if reading his thoughts. He looked more wounded than Dazai had ever seen him. “Do you really think I’m that kind of person?”

“Didn’t you say you would kill me?” he said wryly. “Remember, back at the police station? One day, you might be tempted to follow through on that half-arsed promise.”

Chuuya flushed. “I only said that because of the adrenaline. I wouldn’t really kill you. I wouldn’t even try to!”

“Sure,” said Dazai. 

“And I wouldn’t betray you either,” Chuuya continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “And I wouldn’t leave like your mother did, I would stay and—”

He caught himself suddenly, snapping his mouth closed. “I’m sorry.” 

Dazai watched Chuuya’s eyes scour his bandaged face, looking for any sign of displeasure. He expected to feel it too — Chuuya’s words had hit him like a punch. He had tried for so long to forget his mother, and now the chibi was reminding him once more of everything he had lost.

And yet, when he considered his own emotions, he found nothing but numbness and a vague glee. At least Chuuya hadn’t been bluffing when he said that he did read the news. If he felt any anger, it was because at long last the futility of his furtiveness had finally made itself obvious. What was the point of keeping secrets when the affairs of your family had once made national news?

“You probably don’t even remember your mother,” he said, just to be petty. “Remember? You told me that you lost your memory in the Lab. I'm willing to bet that your name is not your own but one that Rimbaud and Verlaine gave you, and that you cling on desperately to any mention of your past because there is a big batch of emptiness in that brain of yours.”

He laughed at Chuuya's flinch. "Trust me, there isn't anything more of you I want to learn about."

“Well I guess the same can be said for me then, because I know things about you too,” Chuuya said, his voice quiet, but with simmering rage instead of indecision. 

Dazai pulled his knees up to his chest and rested his chin on it, tilting his head. “Well then, do go on.”

“I couldn’t have guessed that your father was Tsushima Genemon, but once you told me, several things were made clear.”

“Oh my,” Dazai drawled. “What a mistake I’ve made.”

“Your real name is Tsushima Shuuji, the first son of your father but not biologically his own. You were the result of your mother’s rape that her conservative family did not allow her to abort — but some claim that it was not a case of assault but one of love.” His voice dropped. “It’s a popular theory, fuelled by the way she cried and begged for his sentence to be shortened during the court trial, and how she left your family after he was freed. Not to mention that the marriage of your family was notoriously a case of politics, not affection.”

He paused. “Am I right?”

“Undoubtedly,” Dazai said, and punched him in the jaw. 

Chuuya reeled back for a moment, caught off his guard, but then hit Dazai back in the shoulder. It was enough to send him staggering, slumping down against the nearest wall. Chuuya approached like some demon of death but did not hit him again, simply slamming his right fist against the wooden panelling next to Dazai’s head. He touched Dazai’s chin, lifting it up. 

“Emotion,” Chuuya said. “How rare, and how curious.”

“Shut up,” Dazai said and heaved himself to his feet, aiming for Chuuya again. 

When they collapsed from exhaustion it was with bruises blossoming on their bodies, noticeably more on himself than Chuuya. The air was fraught with tension, unsaid words reaching across the space. Dazai watched as Chuuya dragged himself upwards, swaying unsteadily, before coming over to his mattress and lying down beside him. 

“I’m sorry,” Chuuya said again, as Dazai knew he would. “I wasn’t lying when I said that I wanted to hear it from you. I didn’t want to make so many assumptions.”

“They are not assumptions,” he replied, detesting how genuine Chuuya sounded. How vehemently, rancorously good. “All of that information is free for anyone to search up. It is a testament to your intelligence that you managed to piece it together.”

Chuuya did not say anything but he shifted closer, leaving a sliver of gap between their bodies in case Dazai said no. 

Dazai did not say no. He despised himself for it but he pressed their skin together anyway, feeling with a shudder the sensation of Chuuya’s arms coming around his head, his nose buried in the other boy’s collarbone. 

“I’m sorry too,” he said, meaning it. 

“It’s okay,” Chuuya murmured. “At least we know. From here, it only gets easier.”

“That’s some blind faith you have,” Dazai muttered, his words muffled. 

“Not blind,” Chuuya said, hands in his hair. 

Dazai leaned into it, and realised he was shaking. Was it because of Chuuya’s words, or something else? He did not know, and he hated, hated, hated it. Hated his own weakness. Hated how he looked down and saw his hands trembling. 

He placed them on Chuuya’s waist, just to feel his warmth. It soothed him slightly — he kept them there until both of them drifted off, entwined in each other.

Day 10 - 30th May, 2021:

Kouyou leaped up to the rooftop of Queen’s Mall with an unearthly grace, coming to a halt beside Ace as they surveyed the shattered glass of the gaping hole. 

“So,” she said, “How the fuck did you manage to do that?”

Ace frowned petulantly. “I’d only planned to place a surveillance camera there but Kaiji mistakenly sent me a bomb.”

Sighing, Kouyou released her hair from the elaborate pin holding it up, shaking out the crimson strands. “That was probably not a mistake.”

“Whatever,” Ace said, flapping his hands around. Kouyou side-stepped neatly to avoid being hit with the flailing appendages. “What’s more important is that I saw the kid Mori-san’s after.”

“Tsushima-san’s son?” she asked, mind temporarily blanking. 

“The very one. He’s a creepy little brat, alright — I was just up here, minding my business, spying on him, and then his head snapped up like a cat and we locked eyes.”

“Maybe it’s because you caused half the roof to fall down,” Kouyou said dryly. 

“No, I’m telling you, the guy’s got supernatural senses. He knew exactly where I’d be.”

“You’re not exactly unobtrusive,” she told him, adjusting the folds of her kimono. “But that’s not the point of my visit. Your report stated that you saw him… and then you lost him? How? Aren’t most of your subordinates stationed around here?”

“He went into that kitchenware shop,” Ace said, pointing at the flashing of a neon sign that she could see if she strained her eyes. “He had another boy with him, probably a friend that escaped alongside him. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to corner him so I sent my men into the building to surround the shop, but by the time we got there they were gone. Karma-kun, who was left on surveillance, reported that at one point he saw four other people in there, besides Dazai and his friend. They came out briefly, Dazai went and fetched two kids from who-knows-where, and then they vanished.”

“And where were you during this?” 

“With the rest of my men, trying to fight our way up to the third level. There were more of the undead than we anticipated.”

“You didn’t leave any of them watching the exits?” she asked disbelievingly. 

“Of course I did!” Ace hissed, exasperated. “I’m not entirely stupid! But none of them saw a thing!”

She frowned, redoing her hair into an even tighter knot. “That’s impossible. These men aren’t incompetent, they’re Mafia-trained. How could they miss eight people sneaking out?”

“Don’t ask me,” Ace muttered sullenly. “All I know is that for a moment they were there, until suddenly they were gone.”

Kouyou resisted the urge to scream, instead inhaling deeply. 

“Fine,” she said. “Whatever. It can’t be changed now. Let’s go down there and investigate further.”

“Yes ma’am,” Ace said, leading the way off the roof and through the entrance to the shopping center. Kouyou surveyed the place with some forlornness — it was true that once, she had enjoyed coming here, purchasing makeup and clothes and watching ordinary, unaffiliated-with-crime people go about their daily lives. 

It was ruined now; it might never be the same. It had burned down as many of the things in her life had. 

As they moved further inside the building, Kouyou found herself surprised by the zombie corpses littered along the floor. She was no stranger to them by now, but the sheer magnitude was astounding. Many of them were efficiently decapitated; severed heads lolled on the ground like soccer balls, staring up at her with wide, lifeless eyes. 

“Was it Dazai who did all of this?” she wondered out loud.

“Probably not. He had a friend with him, remember? My subordinates reported that that friend carried blades,” Ace replied. 

Kouyou’s head snapped to him. “Blades?”

“Yes, this is obviously swordwork,” Ace said, gesturing to the dead zombies. “Look at it. It can’t be anything else.”

“I know that, I am a swordsperson myself. It’s just strange, that’s all. The skill this requires… Do you know who this friend may have been?”

“We are currently unsure, but I can get someone to look into it.”

“Yes, do that.”

The rest of the search yielded no results; beyond the occasional stacks of corpses she found, the building was barren. If there was evidence that Dazai left behind, it did not show. 

Kouyou emerged into the morning sun, disgruntled. Never in her years of service to the syndicate had she met someone who was so difficult to track. It was as if the boy had vanished with the wind. 

However, her curiosity was more so piqued by the person accompanying him — the blade-wielder, who managed to turn the mall into more of a massacre of zombies than that of humans. She had set Ace on the job but frankly she thought him untrustworthy; she would take this matter into her own hands. Such a skilled martial artist might be worth recruiting. 

The car she had taken here had been replaced by a bright yellow monstrosity. The windows rolled down with a smooth whoosh, and Kaiji poked out his head. 

“Kouyou-san!” he shouted, waving his arms. “Over here! Mori-san instructed me to pick you up directly. He wants a word.”

“This is so completely unnecessary of him,” she sighed gesturing at the car as she stepped towards him. “Why can’t he send a text like a normal person, instead of sending over the ugliest thing in the entire Port Mafia?”

“Hey, no more Lemon-mobile slander!” Kaiji said. “Otherwise I’ll test my next bomb in your office.”

“If you ever even think about that idea again, I’m going to skewer your brain,” Kouyou threatened, preparing to open the door. Yet just before she did, she heard the sound of scuffling coming from an alleyway nearby. A human shout echoed out, along with the unmistakable snarling of zombies.

“Stay here,” she instructed, and ran to check the commotion. 

The Mafia has had many deaths lately. Making up their numbers was crucial. 

She skidded to a stop just outside, and gaped at the sight that greeted her. Two men, their clothes torn and bloody, likely from days of fighting, were panting with their hands and knees on the floor while five dead zombies lay beside them. 

They turned to look at her as she approached. She noted their appearance — likely in the thirties, around the same as her, and were clad in suits that suggested careers as businessmen. 

“Who are you guys?” she asked. 

“We could say the same thing,” the one with russet hair said. “Are you also a survivor? How can you look so pristine?”

“I am a survivor,” Kouyou said, studying them. Both seemed able-bodied, at the very least, and had intelligence in their eyes. Suitable recruits. “And I can help you live longer.”

“What do you mean by that?” the other said, pushing up his cracked glasses. 

“I’m part of a large organisation with a lot of power, influence and resources. If you join us, I can guarantee you shelter and consistent meals.”

One of Mori’s kinder policies was that they would not force people to join. A discontent subordinate was useless — someone that was forced would grow insolent in their dissatisfaction. It was vital that they believed they joined of their own free will, and found out much too late that they could not leave of that same will. 

“My name is Ozaki Kouyou,” she continued, when the two men remained silent. “I am one of the most powerful people in this organisation. Sooner or later, someone below me is going to approach you anyway, since we recruit all survivors we see.” She smiled sweetly, trying to appear as kind as she could muster. “If you change your mind later, you will not be able to get the benefits that I can offer you.”

The two glanced at each other. 

“Can we have some time to think?” asked the redhaired one. 

“No,” she said cheerfully, tapping her foot. “I’m going to give you five seconds, and if you don’t have an answer for me by then, I shall just take my leave.”

Picking at her nails, she began to lazily count. “Five, four, three—”

“Alright, alright!” one of them yelped. “We’ll come with you.”

“Good choice,” Kouyou said, gesturing for them to follow. “Can I have names?”

“I’m Sakaguchi Ango, and this  is Sakunosuke Oda,” said the Glasses-Man. 

“Pleased to make your acquantaince,” she drawled, smiling wolfishly. “Welcome to the Port Mafia.”

***

An Indiscriminate Amount of Time Previously,

Natsume Soseki stood on a rooftop, the wind billowing his cloak into the air. His eyes were fixated on the figure before him, the man turning so that they were facing each other. The light hit his face, revealing indigo eyes and sable hair. 

“Natsume-san,” said Fyodor Dostoevsky, “I did not think you would come.”

“I almost didn’t,” he replied. “Why go to a meeting where you already know the content being discussed?”

“And yet you came anyway, so surely you must have decided that I have something worth saying,” the Russian said mildly, walking closer.

Chuckling, Natsume slid his hands into his pockets. “Hardly. Do not flatter yourself, Dostoevksy-kun. I came merely to give you an answer to the question I know you will ask.”

Faint displeasure flickered across Fyodor’s face, although he hid it in an instant. “Is that so? Pray, do tell me, what do you think I’m about to say?”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” Natsume lifted his cane and pressed it to Dostoevsky’s chest, tapping it lightly. “You want to ask me, ‘Where is the rest of Arahabaki’?”

Dostoevsky raised his eyebrows. “For the first time, you are correct in your assumptions about me.” He exhaled, looking deeply melancholic. “Can I take this response to mean that you won’t tell me what I want?”

“Actually, I plan to tell you the truth,” Natsume admitted, revelling in the astonishment that revealed itself. Three years of solitary confinement had worn down Dostoevsky’s poker face; or perhaps, he had just gotten better at reading people’s emotions through his time as Prime Minister. 

He leaned down dramatically, smiling at the way Dostoevsky stretched to hear him. Truly, the man had lost some of his discipline over the years. He practically reeked of desperation. 

“You already found it all,” he whispered. “What you’re now searching so eagerly for is not Arahabaki at all; but believe me when I say that you will never find it.”

Fyodor’s eyes widened and he staggered back, crying out, “Lies!” He fired, but Natsume was gone.