Three Hours Prior
Tearing through the streets of Yokohama, Atsushi didn't know where he was going. He just knew that he had to find Fukuchi.
If he found him. If he killed him. Then maybe he could stop himself from feeling like he was being eaten alive.
The first time that Ryuunosuke had died, it had been painful, but he'd been so wrapped up in everything else that he had never really had the time to process his grief. Instead, he'd swallowed it down and locked the pain away in a box before throwing away the key
But then, he saw him again…
And thought that maybe they had a second chance...
But then, he blinked and Ryuunosuke was gone once more…
And the box... well it was full. So when he desperately tried to shove away the feelings once more, it was all too much.
The box was already bursting at the seams and so, it just exploded like that.
An explosion of memories. An explosion of grief. An explosion of hurt.
It was all too much.
But still, that didn't quite get the picture across
So perhaps, it was like he was rewatching his favorite show. He knew when to laugh and when to cry. He could recall his favorite lines, chanting them in sync with the actors. He could even choose the episode, always understanding the baseline of what was happening and all the inside jokes.
But then lightning struck and suddenly nothing made sense anymore.
The Tv began playing every single episode of the show all at once. Sure, it was a show that he loved or at least thought he did, but now it was all wrong. Words turned incoherent. A hundred smiles taunted him. A hundred screams strangled him. A hundred sobs broke him. Nothing made sense anymore. This wasn't his favorite show any longer. Instead, it was just some incoherent mess from which he couldn't discern any semblance of comprehensibility.
He tried to turn the Tv off.
He tried to bash it in with a bat.
Nothing worked.
He was trapped in an unintelligible version of a world that he had once loved. A world that no longer made any sense. A world that he didn't know if he wanted to be in anymore.
Earlier he'd blamed Dazai. However as Atsushi continued to briskly make his way down Yokohama's streets, left alone with naught but the company of his own mind, he found himself beginning to regret that decision.
What Dazai had done and how he had treated Ryuunosuke was fucked up. There was no arguing about that.
But Dazai didn't make the call to save him in the end. He didn't shove Ryuunosuke in the way of Fukuchi's blade. He didn't force Ryuunosuke to tell him to go and leave him there to die.
That was Ryuunosuke's choice.
Ryuunosuke had saved him. Ryuunosuke had sacrificed himself.
To amount Ryuunosuke's legacy to bending down to the will of Osamu Dazai would be to discredit him from having the ability to be his own person. It would be to discredit him from having his own will.
To do so would also be to burn Dazai at the stake for a choice that wasn't of his own making.
For even if Dazai had been the one to give Ryuunosuke the match, Ryuunosuke had been the one to light it.
He didn't have to.
He chose to.
As the thought continued to burn into Atsushi's mind, he found himself almost turning around. He found himself wanting to apologize to Dazai for blaming him for Ryuunosuke's death. Yet the thought of tearing Fukuchi apart overpowered that desire, so he forced himself to continue walking.
Eventually, he would have to stumble upon someone who could point him in the right direction and even if he didn't, walking down these streets gave him a chance to think. It gave him a chance to strategize.
Even if he didn't know exactly where he was going. Even if he didn't yet know how to find Fukuchi, he would just keep putting one foot in front of the other and trust fate.
Except there was just one thing that Atsushi hadn't entirely accounted for.
Fate was a total dick with a stick up its ass.
Atsushi was jolted from his thoughts at the sound of a snicker echoing through his ears.
He froze.
Turning his head, Atsushi looked towards where it had sounded from, only to be met with a dark alleyway seemingly devoid of life.
The rational part of his mind screamed at him to just walk away, but curiosity won out in the end and he headed towards the sound.
Demons of times past taunted him from within his mind.
Maybe it's Fukuchi. Maybe he's laughing at you.
So wrapped up in his thoughts, Atsushi didn't notice as the shadows shifted and took the form of a man behind him. He didn't realize what was happening, as something hard slammed into the back of his head.
He only saw revenge turned to darkness, as he collapsed and his consciousness faded into oblivion.
Present
His whole life, Chuuya had been haunted by death.
But not in a conventional way.
Instead of falling to it himself, as he should have an innumerable amount of times, it seemed that he was the harbinger of it to everyone else.
And he knew that he shouldn't be lamenting about such things, especially after reassuring Dazai that Akutagawa's death wasn't his fault. Especially after reassuring him that it had just been a cruel twist of fate.
But Kouyou was his sister. A constant in his life, who had always been a guiding hand that he knew he could trust.
She had been one of the last people who hadn't left.
Until she had, and just like with The Flags, it was all his fault.
Despite everything that she had done for him, he had killed her…
Now she was just brain matter and blood splattered across the floor of a prison in a place that was over six thousand miles away.
And sure, it was Arahabki that had done it.
And sure, it was a cruel trick cultivated by the demented mind of Dostoevsky.
And sure, it was something that no one could have seen coming.
But that didn't make it hurt any less.
A hand carding through his hair brought him back to reality, and he turned to face Dazai next to him.
"Why does this always happen to us?"
Dazai didn't reply. Instead, he just let the question hang in the air, open-ended and unanswered.
For a few more hours Chuuya just lay there, curled up against Dazai on the sole couch of the living room, both sharing stories about Kouyou and Akutagawa, as they reminisced about a time that had already come to pass.
Still, pressing matters were at hand, and as much as Chuuya wanted to just stay there in that moment and give himself time to finally breathe and grieve about all the shortcomings life had handed him that simply wasn't possible.
He knew it and Dazai did too.
They had to face Fyodor. They had to save Atsushi.
They always had to do something.
After taking just a few more moments to prepare himself to once again suppress the pressure of the demons that wanted to tear him apart from within, Chuuya finally acquiesced and forced himself to return to the reality of his life with Dazai following his lead shortly thereafter.
They would fall back into their routine. They would banter, joke, tease and forget until this was all over. Only then would they be allowed to figure out the rest.
"Now, how the fuck are we gonna find this motherfucker?"
A smile tugged at Dazai's lips.
"I'm glad you asked."
The melancholy of the past few hours faded into the background, as they shifted back towards the more pressing matters of the current. Almost like a light switch.
Chuuya watched as Dazai stood, heading over to the Tv and ejecting the VHS tape from the player, before sitting next to Chuuya once more.
Lifting the tape, Dazai's eyes narrowed as he studied it.
His gaze flitted over the inscribing on the top of the VHS as the echoes of calculations lit up in his eyes. Watching him like this, so invested and focused made something warm curl in the pit of Chuuya's stomach, but he forced himself to push the feeling away for now just like everything else.
Now was not the time for that.
It only took a few more seconds, before Dazai finally looked up from the tape looking proud.
"I found him."
"Okay great! Now, where the hell is he?"
Smugly, Dazai tilted the tape in Chuuya's direction so that he could see the writing scrawled across the top of the tape.
Color/35 Minutes Rated R
Closed Captioned Cat. No. 060261 9
Section #: 2524N
INFORMATIONS ON PUBLIC SCREENING OF THIS VIDEO CAN BE OBTAINED BY CALLING (045)139-3721
PrintEd in Japan
While Chuuya considered himself to be somewhat intelligent, no matter what Dazai said, the writing on the tape looked rather normal to him. Of course, the 'E' being capitalized in 'PrintEd' was a bit odd, but it could honestly just be chalked up to some weird typo.
Still, it had to be a code of some kind if Dazai was practically shoving it in his face.
"It's a code," Dazai said, mirroring his thoughts.
"Wow, I never would have guessed."
Ignoring the sarcastic comment, Dazai continued.
"Honestly, I'm kind of surprised Dostoevsky didn't come up with something more clever. This is pretty juvenile actually, but I mean at least it'll still make me sound smart to someone like you-"
Chuuya grabbed his jaw, silencing him.
"Just fucking explain it already."
"I was just about to if you'd let me get to it," Dazai complained, yanking his face away from Chuuya's hand with mock hurt. "Anyways, it's pretty simple. As you can see, at the top of the tape, it says 'Color/35 Minutes Rated R.' The thing is though that the video was not even close to thirty-five minutes, so that already means something is off. However, if you take the parts that say 'color' and 'Rated R' you can deduce that it's referring to the color red-"
"Why the fuck would anyone deduce that?"
"Chuuya don't try to comprehend things that you'll never understand. Anyways, now we've got that piece of information, we know that Fyodor is hiding somewhere involving the color red."
"You didn't answer my question, jackass."
"Ugh fine, for this part of the code, we're working from the outside in. Since the most obvious color starting with the letter R would be red, we know that the location has something to do with that color," Dazai explained with a dramatic eye roll like Chuuya was the odd one for not understanding.
The explanation honestly still didn't do much to help explain Dazai's logic. Especially why he was working from the outside in, but Chuuya just let it go, knowing that given Dazai was Dazai, he probably wouldn't be getting a clear answer no matter how much he pestered him. Instead, he decided to just let Dazai get to enjoy sounding smart without questions because then at least that way his bragging would hopefully be over quicker.
"Okay, so moving on, the tape says that it's thirty-five minutes long when it's definitely not. Along with that, there are a lot of random numbers thrown around on this tape, and knowing Fyodor, I'm going to assume that those are the start of coordinates, which means that thirty-five minutes actually mean 35°." Dazai lifted his eyebrows, throwing his hands out as though he were some kind of remarkable genius, which in part he kind of was.
Not that Chuuya would ever admit that.
"Aren't you going to say anything? Like maybe I don't know, 'great job Dazai, you're amazing!'"
"Great job Dazai, you're amazing!" Chuuya exclaimed, although his voice lacked any semblance of enthusiasm to back up the sentiment. "Now what the fuck are the rest of the coordinates?"
"So mean," Dazai complained, but did go back to explaining the technicalities of his deduction. "So now that we've worked through the first line, we know that our location has something to do with the color red and has coordinates starting with 35°. So moving on to the second line we've got 'Closed Captioned Cat. No. 060261 9.' Firstly, I'm going to assume that 'Closed Captioned' means that we're going somewhere that's considered private. Then there's the category number, which has the numbers '060261 9,' which is weird because why is the last number the only one that's separated? Now, a normal person might overlook this and assume that the space was accidental and the coordinates are continuing, but I'm not-"
"Obviously," Chuuya sarcastically chimed in to which Dazai shot him a glare, but continued regardless of the snide remark.
"Now if you would stop interrupting me, the fact that this is a category number seems to point more towards a room number perhaps, if you will, not coordinates. After all, a location isn't a category but a room can be categorized. This means that '060261' is the room number while '9' is the sector that it's in since it's improbable for a room number to simply be referred to as number nine."
Although Chuuya would never admit it, Dazai's ability to be able to logic his way through the world was something that amazed him. It made him feel safe too, because if Dazai was this smart then why should he ever need to worry about the next step? Dazai would always have a plan and a light to guide the way. Of course, there were faulted moments, but in the end, Dazai almost always seemed to find a way to pull through. Chuuya just wished Dazai saw things that way too. For as much as Dazai prided over his work, Chuuya knew that deep down Dazai had always felt inadequate. Perhaps that was what fueled him to be as smart as he was because he was scared that without his intelligence people would realize just how worthless he was and leave. As much as that wasn't true.
"Now, moving onto the next line, it reads "Section #: 2524N.' This is odd because why is the section number ending in a letter rather than another number? And look, I know what you're thinking," Dazai raised his voice, in a terrible attempt to try and mimick Chuuya, "But Dazai, some section numbers do have letters!"
"That definitely wasn't what I was fucking thinking, and you know what, fuck you, I don't sound like that."
Ignoring him, Dazai continued, "and to that, I say, dear Chuuya, you are so incredibly stupid."
Chuuya flipped him off, only to have the gesture ignored just as well.
"It just doesn't make sense that there's only one letter in the section number with the rest of the digits being numbers and that's because the coordinates are continuing and 'N' stands for 'North,' which then means that twenty-five and twenty-four are the northern coordinates. So now we have a red private property in the ninth sector with room number 060261 and we know that the location's coordinates start with 35°25'24"N. Now, because we've got coordinates coming from the north, that means that the next set will either come from the west or east, which rules out the south. Since north was denoted with the letter 'N,' that probably means that we're looking for a capital 'E' or 'W' if we're looking for consistency. So this brings us to the fourth and fifth lines which are going to tie in together. Looking at the fifth line, which reads 'PrintEd in Japan,' we can see that the 'E' here is capitalized, so now we've figured out that the next set of coordinates will be set to the east." Dazai turned towards Chuuya, in a desperate search for validation.
"Impressive," Chuuya deadpanned, but it was enough for Dazai who practically beamed at the questionable praise and continued as though Chuuya had delivered him with a round of extravagant applause and roses.
Honestly, it was probably just to try to piss Chuuya off.
"So then reading the fourth line 'INFORMATIONS ON PUBLIC SCREENING OF THIS VIDEO CAN BE OBTAINED BY CALLING (045)139-3721' we can deduce multiple things," Dazai continued, pointing a finger at the referenced part of the tape. "First we tell that this phone number is fake because it simply doesn't contain the right amount of numbers to be considered one, which all the more points towards this being a code. Then, we've got the area code for Yokohama in '(045).' So, this means that the rest of the numbers here reference the coordinates that we're lacking for the east. '139' must be the first part with '37' and '21' being the next parts of the coordinates, due to the separation. So now, we've got 139°37'21"E and with that, we've found our rat."
Pulling up google earth, Dazai plugged in the coordinates 35°25'24"N, 139°37'21"E, before setting his virtual person on the ground, to drag himself past an old Coca-Cola machine and towards a self-storage facility. Chuuya watched as Dazai forced the app to take him to the front of the facility where two doors stood. One red, one blue.
"I'm so good at this," Dazai bragged, zooming in on the red door, which read 'trunk room first-floor entrance.' Then zooming back out Dazai, moved back towards the coca cola machine, so he could peer at the first-floor storage units, zooming in on their numbers until he finally came across the one that he was looking for. Sure enough, the furthest unit contained unit number 060261 and was in sector number 9.
"Fuck yeah."
