Bungou Stray Dogs doesn't belong to me.

His reason

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Osamu Dazai was a strange man.

Always smiling, despite coming from a past darker than the night itself. Continuously making the world around him livelier even though all he wanted was to cease existing.

Well– it wasn't that he wished for death. To be more accurate, he had never found a reason to live. So he spent days, weeks, months there, just being, making himself useful for the people he appreciated as he waited for something to happen, something that ignited within him a flame whose colour he had never seen.

.

Kunikida once asked him how he could spend his existence like that. Doppo Kunikida, whose whole life was planned by himself, whose heart burnt with a passion for his ideal, bright and warm with the foolishness –naivety, as Dazai would often put it with a crooked smile and something akin to fondness in his voice– of someone who genuinely believes there is a way to make everyone happy; of course he didn't understand how anyone could deal with that kind of emptiness within their chest.

As usual, Dazai answered with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I want to help people, even if there's no meaning to it."

.

It hadn't always been like that, Kunikida learnt later. There had been a time when Dazai had been on the other side, on the side that benefited from murder and extortion. And from what little he knew about it, he had been terrifyingly good at it.

.

Kunikida appreciated and respected his partner, so he never pried into the reason why he had left the Port Mafia. One day he caught Yosano whispering quietly to Ranpo about the matter; and it would have been easy, it would have only taken a bit of praise and some money to buy him candy, but Kunikida found it wasn't really important.

All that mattered was that privileged mind had put his intelligence and gift to good use, that he was on the right side now.

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Dazai's reason was only his.

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At least until that one mission. Maybe they lowered their guard, maybe the enemy was just stronger. Kunikida didn't know. All he knew was they found themselves outnumbered, that he had to fight gifted soldier after gifted soldier, that Dazai could barely manage to nullify their ability as they kept coming.

That when somehow they subdued most of them, when Kunikida's legs threatened to give way and he could see the tremor running through Dazai's shoulders, when adrenaline started dissolving into exhaustion clinging to their limbs and Kenji's ever cheerful figure appeared on the end of the street, ready to help, a fallen enemy grabbed a gun, pointed at Kunikida with it.

Then, all Kunikida knew was that the shadow getting in the way of the bullet shouldn't be there.

He was barely aware that the name screamed at the same time the gun was fired––

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"Odasaku!"

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––wasn't his own.

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Later, as he watched Dazai sleep, pale and frowning at whatever he was dreaming about, Kunikida tried to ignore Kenji as he explained Atsushi what had happened. Only when the kid repeated the name Dazai had yelled as he shielded his partner with his own body and Ranpo huffed Kunikida glanced at his colleague.

Ranpo shifted on his seat, looked down.

Kunikida sighed slowly, eyes drifting back to Dazai's motionless figure.

.

Osamu Dazai was a strange man, indeed.

But Kunikida would make sure his reason kept being only his until he wanted to share it.

Author's Note: Look, I don't know how good or IC this is. I just had a lot of feelings.

What do you think about it?