The Bungou Stray Dogs brainrot is unparalleled.
Anyways, Dazai was asking if Shion was the slit-mouth woman of Japanese urban legend: she is allegedly a beautiful female ghost with long, straight black hair, who covers the lower half of her face with a mask or scarf and carries around a pair of medical scissors (or some other sharp implement). She asks people if she's pretty, and if they say yes, she'll pull off her mask/scarf to reveal that the corners of her mouth have been slit Joker-style from ear to ear and repeat her question: if you say no at any point, she'll kill you with her scissors. If you still say she's pretty after she reveals her slit mouth, she'll just use the scissors to mutilate you to match her own appearance. Allegedly, you can avoid death/disfigurement by describing her as average or throwing hard candies at her and running.
June 10th, 2022
It is, Shion thinks, a wonderful night.
Others may disagree with her: rain is pouring down through the streets, plastering everything in shades of grey and making the darkened glass on every building ominously slick and shining, and there is a chill in the air that the water brings with it, promising damp and discomfort and all manner of uncomfortable things.
But Shion has always enjoyed the rain, even before last week.
Last week, when she had awoken to a sore throbbing in her stomach, blood on her kimono, and the familiar weather-beaten walls of the ancient Sonozaki house around her. She'd followed the voices to a boy that reminded her painfully of Satoshi-kun, holding the ancestral bell that would solidify her claim on the family.
She had found out that Onee had given her one last gift.
And in that shining morning as she stood before the shattered, burned remnants of the school that had consumed her friends and the only family she had ever loved, Shion had tasted the damp sweetness of lingering rain as the sun finally broke through the clouds.
She smiled fondly beneath her scarf.
She isn't here for pleasure, though –strictly business. Cleaning up the dregs of Mifune's traitorous followers is a time-consuming job, but Shion has finally taken on the role that she had been born for, and even after her sister's comforting presence had vanished like the ghost it was, she is a Sonozaki and she will not falter.
Perhaps some would think it madness, to have the leader herself sweeping through the city. But madness is the way of Hinamizawa, of Onigafuchi. Her village had not been called the Abyss of Demons for nothing in ancient times, and, Shion liked to think, her ancestor's blood ran true in her.
She flexes the fingers of one hand. It is, perhaps, the only nervous tic she has, her hand twitching with the memory of when three of those nail beds had been tingling, raw, and bleeding for months on end.
Shion had done it even so, and she rather thought, as her feet splashed through puddles, feeling the damp hems of her kimono wind around her bare calves, that such brutality and such savagery were unknown here, in the big city. The fingernail-ripper had not been the only torture tool in the Sonozaki basement, merely the only one that Shion had used on herself. Her time at her mother's side, trying to keep the family together after the Great Hinamizawa Disaster, had taught her the use of much, much more.
Shion lightly twirls the umbrella that hangs over her shoulder, shielding her from being soaked in the steady downpour, as she turns down a blind alley, opening the door in the wall there.
With her distinctive green hair dyed a deep black and her exotic teal-green eyes shadowed by the darkness of night all around her, it is exceedingly difficult to recognize her, Shion knows. She is relying on it, as a matter of fact, for her umbrella has no weapon hidden within it, and guns are such noisy, clumsy things.
"A moment of your time, gentlemen?" she asks politely of the half-dozen men clustered within the warehouse. They are wearing Western suits, but thankfully none are cliché enough to don sunglasses, even though Shion sees the bulge of several pistols under their jackets. That will be troublesome, no doubt.
"…What?" a particularly bullish man, who seems to be the leader, asks after a moment. Shion supposes she can understand that: here she is, a lovely woman dressed in a simple, somber kimono and with trendy scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face, holding an umbrella coquettishly over her shoulder as she asks what is almost certainly a group of ne'er-do-wells for a moment of their time. Shion doesn't really have cause to smooth over her regional accent –not publicly and not often– but she can definitely do it. She went to a private Catholic school, after all.
In any case, as a polished woman of exquisite middle age and an impeccable manner of speaking (bleh, to all those hours of speech lessons at St. Lucia's), Shion is certainly the last person these men might expect to accost them, especially in an empty warehouse late at night.
"I'm afraid that I found myself lost upon visiting this city for the first time, and as my phone has died, I began trying doors to ask someone for directions." Shion said, tilting her head and batting her eyelashes a little as she assumes the most vapid expression that she can. "I don't suppose any of you could spare a minute or two to direct this poor old woman?"
The first thug groans a little, turning to the others, and jerks his chin at what looks to be the youngest and skinniest with an exasperated grunt. The young twentysomething hastens over to her, and Shion offers him her arm, playing the part of a needlessly polite dame to the hilt. He grasps her arm rather gingerly, hurrying her to the door to undoubtedly get her out of the way of whatever illicit conversation is about to resume, and Shion smiles behind her scarf again as she is rushed into the hallway outside.
He probably doesn't even feel it as the scissors, sharpened to a needlelike point, pierce all the way between his ribs and into his heart in one swift thrust. Shion catches the body as it drops, only making sure to lower him to the ground without a sound before she retreats, swiftly moving back the way she had come. She leaves the corpse where he lays, sprawled on the ground between the docking area and the warehouse proper, slowly bleeding out onto the cold concrete ground.
Her black-dyed hair swishes behind her like gossamer as Shion takes her place behind some machinery, carefully cleaning her scissors on a loose end of her scarf, an end that is soon tucked under her collar. She won't have any loose drips of blood falling and alerting her enemies, when she catches up to them again.
Shion doesn't particularly like killing, but these men had sealed their fates. She had put out the announcement last week, just as she had returned from Hinamizawa with the bell. She was the new leader of the Sonozaki clan, and anyone who dared to side with Mifune's faction after the old man had died would be hunted down and killed without mercy. Such was the path of the demon –the path that Shion had set her feet on with indomitable resolution, in order to carry on her family's legacy.
She…didn't care for her legacy.
She didn't particularly care for her family, even.
But without her twin, without Satoshi-kun, without everyone that had been dear to her in Hinamizawa –what was her point in living? Being tied to the Sonozaki family, serving as the heir…it was the only thing she could think to do, the only bit of grounding stability Shion had left in her life. If not this, then what? Apart from her duty to her family, the duty that had made her and Onee's lives a misery as children, Shion had nothing now.
So she may as well fulfill it to the best of her ability, until her body ran down and finally freed her spirit.
She spun the scissors around her thumb, and smirked behind her scarf.
Half a dozen men.
They were fairly easy to pick off, since it was less than five minutes before several of them were sent out after the man who had supposedly ushered her to the exit.
Shion's blades slid across one man's throat quickly, like a secret kiss shared between them, and down he dropped with a final gurgle as rich red blood sprayed free. It alerted his partner, but Shion was already ducking behind a machine as gunfire rang out, her long blackened hair wafting behind her on the breeze.
"Damn you!" the man shouted. "Boss-"
His last words ended in another choking gurgle as her scissors, thrown with deadly accuracy, took him in the throat.
"Hmph." Shion straightened up from her place crouched on the machine she had judged as easiest to climb. She dropped down, her wet kimono flapping about her ankles, and stepped over to retrieve her scissors, pulling them free as a long, glistening ribbon of blood dripped down to the ground. Guns were so very noisy, but Shion had grown up with Kasai, and she knew how to handle them better than anyone who wasn't in a special ops group.
The weight of a machine gun tucked into the crook of her elbow was almost familiar, nostalgic, as she picked it up and turned around just in time to catch one of the thugs running out of the door to the docking area.
"You-"
Gunfire blasted through the air as the man dropped, barely able to level his own weapon before Shion's brief spray of bullets caught him in the chest. The next men weren't so stupid as to run out into a hail of bullets, but that was alright. Shion knew what she was doing.
Her footsteps glide across the ground, soft and silent, and before the final two men can do anything, she has already burst through the door again, returning to the larger space, and as Shion plants a foot and spins, she catches sight of both men on either side of the door, pistols drawn. She fires with one hand and swings out with the other, hurling her scissors again before she ducks and sways backwards.
The man on the left drops, riddled with bullets.
The man on the right drops, her scissors having taken him in an unexpectedly lucky shot through the eye.
Shion hums her awe as she straightens up, using one edge of her kimono to wipe the machine gun of its fingerprints before she drops it carelessly in the doorway, stepping over to remove her scissors. She has one last thing to do –one last little ritual to perform– and then she can continue this mission finished.
"Are you Kuchisake-onna?"
Shion pauses with her foot on the bottom step of the staircase up to the train station, her umbrella once again cradled over one shoulder as the rain hushes down around her.
She turns, and beholds a boy.
It isn't Satoshi-kun, or that Otobe boy –he's brunet, for one thing, with short wavy hair that's several shades darker than it should be, soaked with rain. His eyes –eye, the right one is covered by bandages– is brown, an amber-brown that promises to be mercurial should his mood ever change. He seems somber now, though, as somber as the pitch-black coat that enfolds his slender body like he is drenched in ink. As though to sharpen the contrast, the shirt beneath that coat is white, and one arm is in a white sling. He is tall for his age, very tall, but also very slim, which made him look even taller.
The expression as he looks up at her is deep and dark, as unfathomable as the bottommost reaches of the sea. For a brief, hair-raising moment, reminiscent of the one in which Rena stared up at a stormy grey sky much like this one and talked of Oyashiro-sama, Shion is overcome by the thought that here is another person that possesses a demon like my own.
"It's rude to accuse someone of being a yūrei so late at night, young man." she says, her face crinkling in a coquettish smile beneath her scarf as she lightly twirls her umbrella. "What on earth makes you say such a thing?"
"Ah, you have the face-covering, the pale skin, and the long black hair." the boy singsongs, losing his startlingly inscrutable expression like it was a spasm as his own face lights up in a sunny smile, pointing to his cheek to indicate her own scarf. "And you're a beautiful woman…"
His smile darkens, becomes something ominous, knowing.
"…carrying a sharp object at night."
Shion draws in a quick, silent breath through her teeth, dropping her vapid persona as she narrows her eyes. Though she is not so inexperienced as to look down and check, she knows that her scissors are hidden in the fold of her expansive sleeve: there is nothing to give away their presence. She caught all the blood on the inside of her scarf, which is even now plastered to her back. This boy is just like Rena –disturbingly smart for his age, and (almost) intuitive enough to border on psychic.
Hmm…
He isn't armed, not visibly, and Shion would like to think that she can handle herself against a teenager with one arm in a sling even if he is armed with a gun.
She removes her foot from the step, turning to face him.
"And what would you do if I wasn't a Kuchisake-onna?" she asks, showing her own steel as her voice hardens and her aura ices over.
"I'd ask if you have anything to do with the mess back there." The young brunet jabs his thumb behind himself, vaguely in the direction of the street –and her latest job. "Six men found gutted in a warehouse, with their intestines splayed everywhere and their fingernails ripped off."
"I don't see how its any business of yours if it was." Shion replies smoothly. "Young man."
The boy sags with a pitiful whine as he reverts to his more playful persona, like she's insulted him.
"Its Dazai. Dazai Osamu."
Ah.
Shion's heard of this boy –indeed, there's few in the underworld of Japan that haven't. When you talked mafia, you mentioned the Port Mafia of Yokohama, and in the same breath you spoke of their Demon Prodigy, Dazai Osamu, a boy who while only fifteen years old was already marking his mark on the most brutal of port cities.
This could be…troublesome.
"Then you should know, Dazai-kun, that I merely came into town to discipline some wayward members of my family." Shion says, rolling her umbrella over her shoulder again. "I wouldn't trouble yourself over it. After all-"
She reaches out and pats his cheek, avoiding the one with gauze taped over it.
"-boys like you need your beauty sleep, otherwise you won't grow up big and strong."
Dazai Osamu blinks at her for a few seconds –if he wasn't so good at keeping up his mask, Shion would say that he looked stunned. This is clearly not a reaction he's used to, and it takes him a moment to mentally reconnect. The mask slips back onto his face, though, as he gives a small grin.
"You know, this isn't the response I usually get." he mumbles against her wrist, and Shion grins slyly beneath her scarf.
"I'm sure." she croons, making the effort to sound as sickeningly patronizing as possible, and Dazai grumbles a little, raising his uninjured hand to swat her arm away. She understands why she should probably be quaking in fear right now –an injured teenager is far different than Dazai Osamu in any condition– but Shion simply doesn't have the capacity to quake anymore. If she dies, she dies, and if she lives, she lives.
"So, you're-"
"I'm a Sonozaki. I'm from Hinamizawa." Shion sighs out, eager to get that usual song and dance over –she's fairly sure that this boy has already deduced exactly who and what she is, and it isn't like Hinamizawa hasn't become a household name after all the…incidents. It isn't even her family, half the time, its just people with roots in the old village just…going postal, slaughtering themselves or their families or innocent bystanders, like they've been possessed by the curse one by one. To be someone with even the faintest family ties to Hinamizawa is to be demonized, almost literally, even after all these years.
The glint in Dazai's eye brightens.
"That village that's haunted by ghosts?" he asks, glowing like a regular boy who's just been offered all his wildest dreams at once. "I've always wanted to go there! It's a popular suicide destination, isn't it? Just imagine, drifting off into the afterlife accompanied by spirits!"
Shion cocked an eyebrow at him.
"That's my village you're talking about, Dazai-kun." she huffs. "And that might be less peaceful than you imagine."
The young man blinks at her, narrowing his eyes. Shion feels the corner of her mouth curl, the urge to be mischievous rising within her.
"Haven't you heard?" she teased. "Hinamizawa has one foot in the land of the dead –its filled with the spirits of those that have died there. Spirits that have never gone to the afterlife. Why, if you die there, who knows might happen."
Dazai's cheeks puff out in an incongruously endearing pout.
"There's no reason to spoil my dreams." he whines. "You're mean, Sonozaki-san."
"I've been to that village recently enough to know that it's a thoroughly unpleasant spot." Shion says, and the young man tilts his head. His cheerful demeanor keeps almost making Shion think that he was less dangerous than rumors painted him, but whenever that thought truly rose, he changed again, becoming like this, his brown eyes turning dark as the bitterest coffee as his intelligence rose, quick and sharp like a poison stinger.
"I thought you said it was your home."
"It's a home I lost everyone in." Shion retorts, her fingers clenching a little on the handle of her umbrella. "I lost everyone when the gas erupted, and I lost Onee again when I went back and-"
She bites her lip, quickly turning away.
"My apologies, Dazai-kun." Shion says, channeling all her grief into perfect, icily calm elocution. "I showed you an ugly side of myself, just now. Since we don't really have much to say to each other, I'll be taking my leave. The internal politics of the Sonozaki family are of no concern to the Port Mafia, after all."
She made as if to step up the stairs again, but Dazai suddenly grabbed her arm. His fingers are long and thin, his hand cold as ice as it curls around her wrist. Unbidden, the thought again entered her mind –here is a demon– and Shion brushes it aside in favor of turning slightly with a sharp frown.
"What?"
"If you've come from the place that has a foot in the afterlife –do you still think that there's a sharp line between life and death?" Dazai asks, his eye burning into hers –deep and dark again, but with a hidden flame beneath, making his brown eye shine almost crimson.
"…I think it's not nearly as sharp as we're led to believe." Shion says, tugging her arm away from him. Dazai lets go willingly, but she doesn't make as if to turn away again. "Why do you want to die?"
"That's my business." Dazai replies, still holding her gaze with his own. "Why do you want to live?"
"Onee's spirit told me that I should live my life down to its very last squeeze of toothpaste." she answers. "So that's what I'm doing."
"But you don't want to?" Dazai asks, something hungry shining in his uncovered eye.
"I don't want to." Shion replies calmly. "No more than you do, I suppose."
Her head tilts into something approaching her coquettish pose from before, as something that's not quite a smile crawls across her face.
"Funny, isn't it, how the mafia catches all us lost souls who don't know the meaning between life and death?" Shion asks, her teal eyes glinting with something just as dark and sad as his. "What are we going to do when there's no more jobs they have to give to us?"
"Die, probably." Dazai answers. "Would you consider doing me the honor of a double-suicide someday, Sonozaki-san?"
"I'm afraid I simply cannot abide the shamelessness of committing a double-suicide with someone more than twenty years younger than myself." Shion tells him kindly, her eyes crinkling at the corners as she smiles. "Perhaps you can send some flowers to my funeral instead, if you don't die first. An executive in the Port Mafia has a bit of a longer lifespan than little old me, I'm afraid."
"Maybe." the young man says, and there's no mistaking the way the flicker dulls in his eyes, even as a small, almost genuine smile curves his lips. "I suppose we'll meet again on the other side of the river then, Sonozaki-san."
"Perhaps we will, Dazai-kun."
They stand together in the falling rain for a moment, caught in cold silence as the train roared by overhead, shining light through the gloom and making the tracks rattle as though caught in thunder.
9.57 AM, USA Central Time
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