The world felt like it was spinning, as enraptured in chaos as it was. Yet, Dazai found himself frozen in place, and trapped in the eye of the storm.

Warring thoughts waged through his mind, as he desperately searched for a way out of it all. He just needed to think of a way to save both Chuuya and The Agency.

The ending of it all was still yet to be determined. So, there still had to be some kind of hope that such a wish could become reality.

Yet, every train of thought that he delved into always resulted in someone dying. Every 'solution' was just as fucked as his own head, and it made him want to just sink down to his knees and scream his throat raw.

If he hadn't killed Mikhail, would the world have been different? Would everyone still be alive?

13 Years Prior

The sound of snow crunching beneath his feet reverberated in Dazai's ears.

Something once pristine and beautiful, marred and decimated by the imprint of his very own existence.

It was just like the snow that had been pulverized beneath the weight of that boy's brother only a mere thirty minutes prior, as the once untouched white surrounding the boy, Mikhail, had gradually turned scarlet by the inherently destructive nature of his malignant hands.

And sure, he'd let the kid, Fyodor, live, but it was freezing out and he was now completely alone. Chances were that he would freeze to death without help. So had he actually saved him or just prolonged a miserable ending to a tragic life?

He wanted to go home.

But how could he, when such a place didn't even truly exist? When it never even had in the first place?

"Stop lagging," his grandfather snapped up ahead of him, sending an unwelcome feeling, akin to shards of glass hurling through his gut, through him.

Avoiding the cold gaze now bearing down upon him, Dazai picked up his pace, in order to put himself right next to his grandfather, forcing him to take multiple steps for his grandfather's every single pace, so that he could properly keep up.

He was so tired.

"You still have an accent when you speak Russian. You need to get rid of it," his grandfather continued, his voice sharp with criticism, despite his his own accent in Russian being much thicker.

"Okay, I'm sorry."

"I mean I ask so little of you, and still you continue to be such a great disappointment. It's honestly just exhausting to watch. When I was your age, I already spoke twelve languages fluently, shot much straighter than you've ever managed to, and carried out hundreds of flawless executions for my father. Meanwhile, you haven't done shit, and don't think that I don't fucking know that you let that kid live," a manic glint lit up hungry eyes and Dazai froze as his heart seemed to plummet in his chest, "I see everything and I only allowed it to see if you'd really follow through with that asinine shit. Still, he'll probably die anyway with the awful state of his injuries and just how cold it is out here. It'll probably be much more painful than the quick death that you could've given him, but I'm sure that you've already come to that conclusion yourself. You're exactly like your mother Shūji, a waste of time and space. You keep this up and what happened to her and that asshole of a boyfriend might be your fate next."

Shūji. He'd always hated that name. It's why he'd picked his own, not that his grandfather respected that in the least.

Images of blood-splattered walls and the bits and pieces of his parents scattered across the floor flickered unpromptedly through his mind's eye in tangent with the loose thought of his old identity.

He remembered his mother's favorite red heel, protruding with grotesque blood and bone, while her legs lay chopped up on the other side of the room. He remembered the two glazed-over brown eyes of his father rolling grotesquely across the floor of that accursed room.

And screaming. So much screaming.

He remembered being so scared that he'd be next.

He didn't want to ever feel the pain that he'd seen in their eyes and heard in their screams. So lost in their pain that they'd forgotten about anything else.

When he died, he wanted it to be quick and painless. Since that dreadful day, he'd sworn to himself that he would never go through the deathly, hellish torment that his parents had ended up meeting in their deaths, even if it meant taking things into his own hands.

"I'll do better, I promise."

He knew what was coming next, but he also knew that it was pointless to stop it.

The aged palm of his grandfather slammed into his face with such force that it sent him flying to the cold ground beneath him.

Snow buried its way into his clothes, and he forced himself to stay still and refrain from shivering like his body desperately wanted to in response to the cold shock.

Shivering was for women, according to his grandfather. So, while he thought that was stupid, he dreaded to think of how much worse it would make this already awful situation for him if he did.

"Doing better isn't good enough," his grandfather's gruff voice sounded above him. "You need to be perfect."

"Okay."

"Now get up, and stop laying there like you're some kind of despondent little girl. You're a boy Shūji, and boys don't succumb to dumb womanly emotions. I mean, you'll never find any woman to love you if you keep acting like this. Even if you do happen to find one, at this point it's practically guaranteed that she's bound to leave you in the end, because if you keep acting the way that you are, she's bound to end up thinking that you're some kind of fucked up queer. I mean, you and I both know about how everyone feels about those freaks. So stop cowering down there like you have any reason to feel sorry for yourself. I mean you should be grateful, you know? Most grandfathers wouldn't take in a kid as stupid as you. Most grandfathers wouldn't be as kind and charitable as I have. Most grandfathers wouldn't look past how you're such a failure that even my own emotional bitch of a daughter didn't want you. Even that idiot boyfriend of hers saw you for what you really are, but me? I made that sacrifice and took you in, and I promise you that you'll be stronger for it, even if right now you are still quite the fucking disappointment. I suppose that I'll just have to continue to beat it the fuck out of you."

"Okay."

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Dazai's blood turned as cold as the ice surrounding them.

He hated him.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Present

Time was running out. He needed to do something now.

The sound of gunshots rang throughout the space, as he looked over just in time to see Chuuya tackle an invisible figure to the ground.

"Poe!" A voice cried out, from across the room. It had to be Ranpo, Dazai deduced immediately. Of course, it was Ranpo.

He had to step in and help Chuuya now or this could end up going south really soon for both sides. Sure, Chuuya was strong and seemed to be doing a good job of taking the agency members out without killing or seriously injuring them, but he could only keep it up for so long before he was faced with a life-or-death decision.

However, just before he could step in to help, he belatedly noticed the presence of someone discreetly approaching him, only given away by the creaking of a faulty floorboard. Yet, before he could do anything in retaliation, or call out to Chuuya, a hand clamped down over his and a strong arm wrapped around his waist, as he was pulled bodily out of the room, and then into an adjacent one before anyone even had the chance to notice what had happened.

Granted, that was with the exception of Fyodor, of course, who just watched the whole interaction taking place with an amused smile as though he were watching some somehow even more fucked up version of The Kardashians.

Behind him, the person had already rematerialized with the touch of No Longer Human, and now stood in full view of him, but that hardly mattered. He'd know this person even without being able to see them. Rather, he knew exactly who this person was the moment that floorboard had creaked.

This person was one of the only people who knew how to sneak up on him.

This person was someone who he cared for deeply.

This person was someone whom he was now terrified he might have to take out to get back to Chuuya, who was now alone, with a fate left terrifyingly in a limbo of uncertainty.

Kunikida shoved Dazai into the corner of the room and took a few steps back, clutching his head with one hand as though in the midst of a terrible migraine. He then went on to clench his jaw and grit his teeth like what he wanted to say to Dazai physically hurt.

"What's happening now is just like what happened with Gogol and The Book, right Dazai? Please tell me that's true because my mind feels like it's collapsing inwards on itself with just how much I can't believe this. Everyone out there is still under Dostoevsky's spell. At first, Ranpo did have some doubts, but the President immediately pulled him aside and by the time they were back, Ranpo had changed his mind. I don't trust it, Dazai. I just don't trust it. So please, tell me that this is all wrong because it has to be. It needs to be."

The problem was that every word Dostoevsky had said was technically true. Granted there had been some points of perspective left out.

His mind desperately searched for the right answer. A way to get out of this. Yet the only way that came to mind with at least some level of prospect and potential was something that he didn't really relish in doing.

But was there really any other choice?

He needed to talk to him.

Genuinely.

He needed to just be honest and tell him why he'd done what he did, even though he knew that what he'd done was still appalling, no matter any of his excuses. At least that way, he could give his friend some perspective. At least that way, he would know why.

He couldn't joke or lie his way out of this one. Not this time.

"Kunikida, everything that Dostoevsky said was true-"

"Dazai, no. Please," Kunikida cut him off, practically pleading.

He hated this. He hated being so vulnerable.

Yet it was the only possible way that he could think of to get out of this situation as successfully as possible and return to Chuuya's side before anything too terrible happened.

Taking a deep breath, Dazai forced himself to continue.

"Let me finish," he said, letting out a heavy sigh, "just let me finish talking and explain it from my point of view. Please, that's all I ask of you. I know what I did was wrong, but it's more complicated than that, so please, just let me explain."

The air around them felt suffocating, but Kunikida still acquiesced to his request with a minute nod.

"Okay."

"Kunikida, everything that Dostoevsky said was true," Dazai repeated, feeling the familiar of shame curling uncomfortably in his gut.

"However," Dazai continued, "there's more to it than what he thinks happened. You have to understand that I was only nine when this all occurred, okay? My parents had just been killed a few years prior in a mafia hit, which left me in the custody of my grandfather who wasn't really… well to say the least, he wasn't really all that great. He actually ordered the mafia hit I mentioned, which in my opinion is just hilarious given that he hated children, but that hit ended him up with one."

"Dazai, I'm so sorry, I never knew," Kunikida said, but he just shook his head.

"It's fine… they weren't all that great either, I guess. But I mean it is what it is. Anyway, that isn't the point. When I met Mikhail and Fyodor, I was nine and like I said, under my grandfather's custody, who was the head of the Port Mafia at the time. That man was probably the most broken person I'd ever met in my life, violent and abusive to anyone and everyone around him. And while I don't think I would've minded dying at that period of my life, I knew that I never wanted to die at his hands, because I knew that if he did it, he'd make it really fucking hurt."

The walls of the room felt as though they were slowly pressing closer, claustrophobically entrapping him within the memories that frequented his nightmares.

"Anyways," Dazai continued, "he's the reason I met Fyodor and committed the actions that led to Mikhail's death. I didn't do what I did because I wanted to kill him. You have to understand that, I need you to understand that. It's just because I was nine and scared. He'd taken me to St. Petersburg, Russia because apparently he'd heard some rumor about The Book being there, which it was. Eventually, we found the place where it was held in this abandoned facility-type thing, filled with a bunch of homeless kids and young people. It wasn't very long after that that he'd lit it on fire and burned the whole place to the ground. I remember him laughing while it happened with this deranged look in his eyes. He told me to remember what I was witnessing because it was what true beauty in the world looked like. Yet, all I could see was people being burned to death and dying of smoke inhalation, and it made me wonder that if one day I became too boring or disappointing in his eyes, would I face that exact same fate too? Dying in anguish and agony? And while at that time I don't think that I really wanted to live, I knew that I definitely didn't want to go in any way that he ever could've designed. Not after what I'd seen him do. I knew that a way out by his hands would be inescapable and ugly if he truly set his mind to it. So I avoided it at all costs because deep down I was terrified about just exactly what that bastard was capable of."

The walls seemed to somehow get even more impossibly close around him, as all of the wretched memories from that time continued to flood into his mind without mercy. For the umpteenth time in his life, he found himself once again grateful that his grandfather was long dead now, thanks to the assassination that he'd carried out with Mori, as despicable as that man was too by his own right.

"So, because I was scared, I did what he wanted. I acted out his plan to kill Mikhail by using his little brother's ability, which we were able to deduce from months of information from an informant on the inside, who also died in that fire because my grandfather never allowed any loose ends to ever go on living in any of his projects. I think the guy's name was Sergei… Sergei Nechayev? I'm not totally sure though, so I could be wrong. I suppose that it hardly matters anyway now, what with him being dead and all. But yeah, everything was burning to ash and the man who I was stuck with was basking in it all like he was at one of the Illumination shows in Nabana no Sato."

"I understand what I did was bad," Dazai said, "but you have to understand that at the time I didn't think I had any other choice but to do what I did. I was nine and scared and didn't know what else to do. So, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Silence filled the room, as Dazai waited for Kunikida to act. In his heart, he knew the answer to what was bound to happen, but his mind still ran amuck with all of the terrible possibilities and reactions that it could possibly conjure up.

However, despite everything that told him Kunikida would hate him and leave him then and there, comforting arms still only wrapped their way around Dazai and pulled him close in a tight embrace. While, in his heart, he'd known that Kunikida would forgive him, this kind of reaction was so unexpected that for a long moment, he just stood there frozen. Until finally, his mind caught up with reality, and he returned the embrace with a desperate fervor.

This was the first time they'd ever hugged, he realized belatedly.

"I'm so sorry that happened," Kunikida said, still holding him, "you could've told me earlier. I would've understood."

"Surprisingly enough, it's not my favorite subject to talk about," Dazai replied, going with the honest answer, "but thank you. I really appreciate it."

They hugged for a moment longer before finally pulling apart.

Kunikida looked at him with a bit of a twinkle in his eyes.

"I don't think I've ever heard you say that you appreciate me before."

The teasing comment made a warm feeling blossom in Dazai's chest, as he could feel the beginnings of their original dynamic reignite once more.

"Did I say that?" Dazai teased back, lifting a finger to tap his chin, as though he were in deep thought, eyes drifting off to the side. "I don't know if I quite remember that."

"Yeah haha, very funny."

He wanted this moment of peace to last forever, but nothing lasted forever, and as painful as it was, there was still one more thing that Kunikida needed to know.

"Before we go back, there's one more thing I need to tell you and I don't know how to put it lightly so I'm just going to go ahead and say it."

Kunikida's brows furrowed in concern, "what do you mean?"

"Kunikida, Atsushi's dead. He was killed, while caught up in Fyodor's plan to get back at me and pocket The Book. That bastard strapped him up in a suicide vest and blew him up. Despite it all, the kid tried to take him out with him, but he still somehow managed to get away. I'm so sorry."

All the levity from the previous moment was gone now, as Kunikida trembled where he stood, quite obviously in shock, as his mouth opened and closed, like a fish out of water.

He seemed as though he'd suddenly forgotten how to speak in the midst of the overwhelming grief that had just enveloped him.

In the end, the single word that ended up coming out of his mouth was small, as his voice cracked painfully.

"What?"

"Doppo, I'm so sorry."

"No… no, he can't be… you're lying! You have to be lying! Tell me you're lying, Osamu!"

Before him, Kunikida was trembling, his face crumbling with the grief of such a loss.

"I'm sorry."

"I'll kill him. I'll-" Kunikida took a deep breath, angrily swiping away the stray tears that rolled down his cheeks, not that it did much as they just kept coming.

"We'll kill him together," Dazai promised, "but one thing that I do need you to promise me is that you won't harm Chuuya, and will help me keep the others from harming him too. He has no part in this, Dostoevsky's just trying to use him to get to me."

At first, apprehension filled Kunikida's gaze, but it wasn't too much longer before it'd bled into a look that could be defined as something much more thoughtful.

"Why is Chuuya so important to you, Dazai?"

The question made him pause as he racked his mind for a proper answer, despite his heart ringing out the truth instantly.

"Killing him could damage our alliance with The Port Mafia, which could end up leading to further much more pressing problems, because-"

"No," Kunikida cut him off, "that's not what I asked. I don't care about why it's practical to keep Chuuya safe for political reasons, I want to know why you want to keep him safe. I know you, Dazai, and I know how smart you are. You'll always have some kind of loophole for anything that could get messed up in a political context, so why do you really care about what happens to Chuuya?"

Dazai didn't answer, and the air brimmed with tension.

"I mean even thinking back before all of this, you used to find almost any excuse to bring him up at the Agency. I suppose most of what you said were complaints, but there was always an undertone of respect. You care about him, don't you?"

Silence.

"It's okay if you do," Kunikida continued, "you're my friend and I'll always support you. So, just let me ask you this. Do you love him, Dazai?"

For a long moment, silence held the room hostage, as the temperature seemed to drop into the negatives. However, as Dazai finally raised his gaze up from the ground after a few more moments of silence had gone by, it was as though the sun had risen again into a clear sky full of transparency and promise.

"Yes, I do. Love him, I mean."

"Then that's all I need to know. Now let's go kill that rat bastard."