Please tell me what you think about it, I'd love to improve my writing style! It'd honestly make my day! ^.^
Dazai Osamu. Former Executive of the Port Mafia. Suicide Maniac. Nightmare of every villain and criminal. Infantile and lazy twenty-year old. Or any other name you may know him by.
Dazai was the kind of person who went by a lot of names — he had so many names and personalities that nobody ever knew quite for sure who he really was.
He may seem childish and blasé at times but truth be told, there was not a single person on this entire planet who has ever fazed Dazai in a battle and lived to tell the tale — he defeated them all.
Perhaps that was why he had been accepted as a member of the Armed Detective Agency. Perhaps his skills were the reason for it all.
Even though, Dazai continued to be a mystery to most people, there was one thing about him that always remained the same, one thing that has always and will always define him, one single word — Alone.
"Alone — murder does not hold a candle against it and hell is only a poor synonym."
All his life he's been alone. To him, being alone had become the norm. Even though he often joked about being with a woman or came off as everybody's friend, Dazai could never really imagine himself not being alone anymore.
Of course, right now, there were people in his life, who cared, who he could consider his friends. It might not be that obvious from the outside but Dazai wasn't some teenage kid who thought that everybody hated him and though him worthless, simply because they didn't tell him otherwise.
No, he knew. He knew, and he could feel them caring for him — and it was killing him.
No matter what clothes he wore or how hot the weather was, Dazai would always feel cold.
It was a coldness coming from within, from inside himself; it was that kind of coldness that seemed to be able to freeze whole countries over, the one that burned you by being cold.
And it was this kind of coldness that was clinging onto Dazai's heart, with no chance of it ever melting.
"Loneliness is cold, and I'm freezing."
If he had to describe the feeling of loneliness to somebody, Dazai would explain it like that.
Simple yet to the point.
It didn't really make a difference to him anymore if he was alone in the house, or if he was with somebody or even a whole group — it didn't warm up the ice inside his body, not even by a single degree.
Everyone believed that he, Dazai, was invincible and there were tales about what a deadly and dangerous enemy he was. He had a reputation and in some way, he supposed, that was a good thing — it kept the enemies at bay.
But little did they know that Dazai has been fighting an enemy even he cannot defeat — himself.
Or rather the aching, endless and freezing pain that was loneliness.
Sometimes it would hurt so much that he couldn't breathe anymore. He would be overcome by it, like a bucket of fresh ice water that had been emptied inside himself, catching him off guard.
It always felt like the ice inside himself was growing, the shards of ice digging deeper into his heart, spreading everywhere.
Dazai would then clutch his chest and try to control his shaking breathing, desperately wanting to cry, to be able to release some of the ice through tears — but he couldn't.
He had never been able to cry, no matter how much he tried, how much he craved it, to be able to let go of some of this pain. It was like a cruel joke; he of all people who so desperately needed to, was denied.
After some time his breathing would get steady again and he would get used to the new level of coldness — after all, there was no other way than to accept it.
Usually those were the times when he would try it once again — to kill himself.
Nowadays, Dazai would often joke about his love for suicide, to the point where his co-workers didn't even really care anymore.
It wasn't like that at the beginning; the first time Dazai had tried to take his life while being a new member of the Armed Detective Agency, all hell went loose. Everyone was beside themselves.
It was one of those times that Dazai noticed how much they really cared.
Everyone had been shocked — Why would someone as lively and cheerful as Dazai try to take his own life? Had he been blackmailed? Had it been an attempt on his life, made to look like suicide?
Dazai had brushed it all off, talking about it as if it wasn't that big of a deal. Of course, they had been sceptical at first, some had even tried talking to him, getting close to him and comforting him.
After a few times of him unsuccessfully trying to kill himself, they stopped taking it seriously. It was like a joke that's gotten old, a running gag.
They didn't have the time to waste on his unusual hobby. It somehow became a part of his personality — Dazai Osamu, the Suicide Maniac.
It has been the same with the bandages that covered his whole upper body.
At the beginning, everybody was worried about what had happened to him, they would ask questions about who had hurt him and if he'd had gotten rid of them but Dazai had also brushed these questions off. He evaded them as light heartedly as he'd had the ones about his suicide until everyone had come to accept them as a part of himself. Eventually they all stopped asking.
Only Dazai knew what was beneath these bandages he so carefully renewed every evening.
Hidden underneath the bandages was Dazai.
Scars over burns over bruises over cuts covered his whole body, marking and reminding him of each attempt he'd made to rid himself of this loneliness, of this life — each failed attempt.
No matter how hard he tried, how many times and how many different ways — he never seemed to succeed.
It was like the agony didn't want to let go of him, like the pain was what was keeping him alive.
Many people wondered why Dazai would want to kill himself, because surely he cannot hope to enter Heaven — and he did not.
No, if there were indeed Heaven and Hell waiting for him on the other side, he would gladly accept his place in Hell.
Because nothing could ever compare to the sheer agony he was in now.
Everyone believed that he was invincible and there were tales about what a deadly and dangerous enemy he was he was. He had a reputation and in some way, he supposed, that was a good thing — it kept the enemies at bay.
But little did they know that the one enemy Dazai has been so desperately trying to defeat was invincible; that the enemy he has been so desperately trying to defeat was he, himself.
Dazai would always be able to win a fight, he never lost and he never had to worry about dying in battle.
And perhaps that was the cruel irony of it: Dazai Osamu was known to be invincible, yet the enemy he wanted to defeat the most was himself.
He was like a prodigy — but how do you go about killing a prodigy?