Work Text:
((it can hear you))
He feels inadequate
in every single way.
Inadequate to the touch
to the breath
to the visceral.
Infinite inadequacy, stemming endless planes, one kilometer after another.
It circumnavigates the northern hemisphere twice, his inadequacy.
He is perfect.
Not just a perfectionist,
perfect.
Holds his breath, closes his eyes,
any and all avoidance to the mistakes that humanness dictate upon a dismal future.
He is not human though,
so why does he fear?
He is perfect,
and perfect should have no fear.
Except it does.
He is perfect, and he is afraid.
--
He’s been questioning everything lately. His existence, the relationships he keeps and leaves behind. The way his life has played out up until this very moment.
The way it will play out up until the very next moment.
The one after that and after that and so on.
He questions the art he puts into this world. Not art in the traditional sense, per se.
The art of the kill of murder of torture of suffering.
The art of suffering.
He’s an expert at all.
His brush dipped, a felt-tipped pen, charcoals and inky hands.
They smear onto canvas,
slowly they spread.
He reaches in to the puddle of red, throws himself over the stretched-out fabric,
he lurches.
Throws himself at it. Upon it.
He paints with his body with every inch of him
he only uses red
he wonders if it’s blood
his, or another’s,
it’s a silly notion though.
It can’t be blood.
He knows it to be paint.
He peeled open the packaging with dexterous fingers.
Pried the lid.
Chastised the color.
Meditated on anxiety on fear on his inability to start.
He did all of those things in that very order.
And still. It looks so bloody.
He can’t help but think that. Staring at the disposed packaging clearly labeled “Red Acrylic Paint”.
It’s not blood, it’s acrylic.
Maybe he bleeds acrylic.
Maybe he’s plastic, a melting man that’s more melted than man.
He’s considering sitting in the sun.
Not because vitamin D is “good for you”. Not out of enjoyment.
An experiment of sorts.
To see if he’ll melt.
To puddle like muddied rain and soiled snow.
If he wanted to, he thinks he could melt.
--
The canvas is red and red and red.
Only red.
Lines everywhere. Thumbprints, scratches. Brush strokes and misaligned, perfect straightness.
It’s perfect in its imperfection.
Not imperfectly perfect, but so perfectly imperfect.
As if he himself has mastered the art of imperfection. Holds a title, a crown, the regal stance of imperfect.
A skew.
His work
it’s skewed and slanted and sharp with sadness but
but it’s more than that
it’s bitter
and harsh
frigid
cold
he feels cold
he feels angry
unjustified
but also
furious.
Why isn’t he winning?
He’s imperfect.
He’s trying so hard to be perfect.
He’s been up for 48 hours and it’s not perfect.
Mori asked him to try to paint.
Because he wanted to kill himself
because he was scarring his wrists
because he stopped eating again
because Mori said it would help him relax.
So he’s painting.
He said he’d paint, so he will paint.
But he’s bad.
It sucks.
It sucks it sucks it sucks it’s disgusting
it’s disgusting
he is disgusting.
How the hell could this be relaxing?
He is this painting is this gross self-image of red seeping down red dripping down red
so bright and monochromatic.
Only red. It looks like a pile of death.
As if a child exploded and their little intestines, their little organs, their little everything have splattered and red is all that remains.
He abhors it.
It looked perfect when he started.
He had a white canvas.
it was white it was white it was white it was white it was white
it was white and it was perfect
and then
he got anxious.
So he made his marks.
Slicing one stroke at a time
until
until it wasn’t
until it was crisscrossed and bleeding with no blood
only ink.
Until it was as undignified as he.
He wants to vomit when he sees it.
Wants to hang himself.
Is thinking of hanging himself.
Dazai might hang himself.
Why not?
it’s tempting. tempting. tempting. so very tempting.
but.
but,
but then he would die in front of this thing.
This nasty red
that makes him feel sick to his stomach.
And to die like that, in the putridness of your own self—
does he really want that?
No.
He thinks he might have said it aloud.
It doesn’t matter, there’s no one here to hear him.
Just a painting.
Unless it has ears.
A hearing mechanism?
The painting might have ears. Might have a hearing mechanism.
If/then, he is/would be around someone to hear him.
A painting that might have ears and might have heard his rapid breathing, the physical manifestation of an anxious disposition.
A painting that hears the curses he’s uttered, the shrill insults and malevolent vices he’s praying for and enacting.
If the canvas could hear him, it would hate him as much as he hates it.
Maybe it does already.
That’s it!
It’s the canvas’s fault!
The fabric stretched onwards, upwards, forwards. It hates him.
Loathes him.
Seethes at his very presence.
Because it never wanted this!
To be drawn on. Scraped, bruised and bloodied.
To be torn open and stitched back together day after day after…
the canvas is never satisfied not because it wants satisfaction, but because it can never satisfy
the canvas can never satisfy
it feels inadequate.
His canvas is inadequate.
Antiquated loss and primordial empty.
It’s empty
been emptied
will remain empty.
No matter how many slashes and gashes and stinging strikes it takes.
No matter how raw it’s been rubbed
how strategically it bleeds.
It’s covered in red red red red detestation. Burning odium.
He stares at the painting and he’s staring at something else
someone else.
Someone deeper than red on a piece of stretched fabric.
He looks at the canvas and the red dripping down its sides and onto into within the floorboards. He stares at it intently, intensely, with intentional intenseness.
He stares at it and laments, Why me! What have I done wrong!
Stupid questions.
Foolish, childlike jokes.
He can’t have that. That satisfaction of a new answer. A new chapter.
One he already knows
has known
will always know.
Because he is bad.
He is bad.
He is bad.
I am bad.
He thinks.
He chants.
Utters to the painting that might have ears.
Screams to the ceiling that whispers in the ears of the painting
cries to the walls that trickle to the canvas’s front and sides and back.
The canvas is swallowed in wallow.
He kicks the wooden base that has yet to be attached.
Harder and harder, he kicks smashes splinters.
He’s splintered its foundation.
His foundation is splintered.
Is he laughing or crying?
His face is wet.
Reaching up, he touches his cheek.
It’s red.
Blood?
Paint?
His eyes feel as though they are bleeding red.
And maybe they are.
He wipes it again and again, his open eye uncovered by bandages but covered in red.
He is covered in red.
He looks at the canvas.
It is red.
It is so very red.
It is screaming and crying and kicking and it is still red inadequate red inarticulate red incommunicable red red red red—
The door opens.
--
He enters and sees a mess of a man, a boy rather.
Before him is crumpled, coated in the red of manic brokenness.
Everything is red.
Dripping on the ground.
It’s just red.
He’s staring even though he told himself he wouldn’t.
He didn’t want to stare. Not because he cares. He just didn’t want to.
But he’s doing it anyways. He’s staring.
He’s staring and he can’t take his eyes off
can’t separate
can’t castrate his glare his redeemed fears his own indelible anxieties.
“Dazai, what… what are you…”
He’s stuttering because he can’t speak.
Because he’s trapped in stunning awe
because he’s petrified in revulsion
because he’s filled to the brim with scorning curiosity
because he doesn’t know what else to say.
Words aren’t forming but neither are his complete feelings.
To analyze the situation requires a level head and Chūya thinks he barely has one on a good day.
Today isn’t a good day, so it’s theoretically hopeless.
He feels hopeless and helpless and inexplicable confuse.
Dazai doesn’t answer. He’s too busy clawing.
He claws the painting, the bloodied canvas.
He claws the bandages, the bloodied arms.
He claws Chūya’s eyes, but they aren’t bloody. They’re metaphorically drenched, physically untouched.
Unharmed.
But is he?
Is he unharmed, by being around a person armed with sharp prickling tacks that stick out of every orifice?
He’s bound to be stabbed.
Has been stabbed.
Is continuously stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until he wonders
will he be slaughtered?
Will this blood that isn’t his be his ruin?
Involuntary manslaughter
to bleed out not from your own source, but from another’s.
He’s bleeding out for Dazai.
He’s bleeding out with Dazai.
They stare in tandem, at the mess, the made mockery called art.
They stare and they bleed out.
--
He doesn’t know why Chūya is here and he doesn’t particularly care.
He does care, but not particularly so.
Just, generally.
That’s how he feels often towards his counterpart, the other half of Soukoku.
General.
He feels generally.
Chūya’s asked him something
but Dazai hasn’t heard it
hasn’t listened
even if he could.
He can’t because his ears
they’re rushing
they’re rushing with blood
because he is bleeding out.
Dazai thinks he’s bleeding out.
But he’s not
and now he’s sad
or disappointed
Dazai is disappointed because he knows he’s not
and now he’s thinking and he’s sad.
Maybe he will hang himself after all.
--
If he closes his eyes, he can imagine things the way he wanted them to be. The way he imagined they’d be. The way he dreamt about in the rarity of a moment where he dared, allowed, indulged in nonsense of whim. He sees everything exactly as he wants it. Everything is straight. Straight and parallel. Gold, straight, and parallel. It’s straight. It’s even. It’s straight. It’s parallel.
There’s nothing wrong
there’s nothing crooked
the folds are correct
it’s facing forward
it’s on display
you can flip through it, like a book.
He can be put on display and flipped through like a book because he is worthy of being read.
Of being sold at a bookstore,
even if this means he and his body will be sold.
But he would be sold as art.
As a collectible.
Perhaps a first edition.
Something to be looked at, admired and never touched.
It’s happened before, selling himself.
Not being sold as art, rather being sold as an art.
The art of selling oneself.
The art of self-destruction.
It’s an art and he’s perfected it.
Chaos, it’s his specialty.
The chaotic. Chūya thinks Dazai is the living embodiment of that.
Of the chaotic.
Dazai would agree.
He agrees internally with this imagined thought as he looks at his hands and thinks of Lady Macbeth.
He thinks of washing them.
He thinks of the red that would/will run without want.
He won’t succeed. He thinks it’ll be exactly like the Shakespearean tragedy.
That he will wash them and wash them and scrub rubbing raw and nothing will come off.
They will stay just as red.
It’s always like this.
Rubbing his hands raw
to try and get it off him.
It.
It being him.
Him being who’s on
or rather
in
who’s in and has been in
and will not leave because he never leaves and you think you’re finally free of it
or at least you thought
for like
maybe a sliver of a moment
that’s what you thought
that you were free of him and those feelings that came up
that you can go to sleep at nighttime
and close your eyes
and you won’t see him or feel him or see another him or feel another him
because every shadow is him
and every creak is him
and you’re overreacting.
Aren’t you?
Aren’t you making something out of nothing.
A big something out of a microscopic nothing.
Because it only happened in small increments.
It wasn’t abuse the way we call abuse.
I mean, it was.
But he won’t call it that.
He was learning. Being taught.
Pain to teach and teaching to inflict.
That’s how it works.
He’s in the mafia, after all.
He’s in the fucking mafia.
Pain is part of the rules, a given circumstance.
The pain he feels is a given circumstance and it shouldn’t shock him or surprise him.
But here Chūya stands in front of him, shocked and surprised on his behalf.
He likes how Chūya sometimes feels for him.
How he can see it on the small boy’s face, as it contorts into empathetic shivers.
How the boy is bleeding with his own, special blood. The blood of compassion and care.
A blood that is blue rather than red because it is inside and purified by encasement rather than putrefied with exposure.
Not that he’s particularly compassionate or caring.
Just, generally compassionate. Generally caring.
Chūya is compassionate and caring in a general sense.
And when he feels these things towards Dazai, this way towards Dazai
this way about Dazai.
It’s.
It’s.
it’s.
it’s…
it’s.
He can’t
it’s.
Indescribable?
Gibberish?
He’s speaking gibberish.
Or thinking?
Is he thinking gibberish?
Dazai can’t tell anymore.
He can’t differentiate between the words that may or may not be coming out of his head or maybe Chūya’s head. Can’t differentiate between canvas and body, paint and blood, pain and paint and paint and pain.
Concern and fury.
Empathy and anger.
Compassion and lust.
Is Chūya lusting for him?
Is Chūya like…
just like—
no.
No.
No.
No. no. no. no. no.
No.
No fuck no he can’t
he can’t be that
because he can’t
because that’s scary and he’s doing his best to escape all of that
so Chūya can’t be that
and
fuck
what if he is.
Because they’re all the same.
They’re all the same and Chūya is just like them, isn’t he?
Chūya will use Dazai and Dazai
Dazai will scream.
Will, or is?
He might actually be screaming.
He thinks this, because there’s a loud sound around him
and arms that hover around him
but
but they don’t touch
they don’t touch.
They don’t.
He can’t.
Wow.
Breathless. He is breathless.
He is breathless because these hands.
They aren’t touching.
They’re near, they’re close, they could if they wanted to?
If they tried just the slightest amount, they could touch him. Caress him. Make him feel what they themselves want him to feel.
Make him into part of them.
An extension of warm slimy hands and slimy skin and slimy demoniacal desires.
But they’re not.
They’re not and he thinks he might have just fallen in love.
Not with person, but with hands.
With these hands.
He might be in love with Chūya’s hands.
How warped.
How skewed.
There are words. Maybe they’re saying “What’s wrong?” or “You’re okay.” or “Shut the fuck up, asshole.”
Maybe they say all of those things all at once all at him.
Maybe it’s none of those things. Maybe he’s projecting.
Maybe Chūya’s not saying anything.
It’s the painting that’s talking, isn’t it?
The painting is asking him what’s wrong. If he’s okay. The painting says it will be okay, but it means shut the fuck up.
The painting understands him, even if it loathes him.
It’s red.
The painting is red and Dazai wonders if it has hands
hands that he’s fallen in love with.
--
He’s been screaming and Chūya can’t handle it.
Not because he can’t handle a screaming child.
Not because he can’t handle a screaming Dazai.
Because he can.
But for some reason, right now, at this exact moment, he can’t.
So he’s standing there and hovering.
Is it weird to hover? Rude? Invasive?
Maybe.
But it might be working even if it is any or all of those things.
It might be working because screams subside and gasps falter from hitch to smooth.
Dazai falters from hitch to smooth.
Dazai faltering is smoothing. The act of being smoothed.
He is being smoothed like the canvas will be once it is stapled to—
the foundation is broken.
He’s seeing it now, for the first time since he walked in.
The fractured, splintering foundation.
It’s been torn and ripped and kicked and for a piece of wood as large as it is, it looks pretty damn small.
Crumpled in a corner.
Dazai looks small.
Dazai is crumpled in the corner.
Chūya tells Dazai it’s okay, maybe.
Chūya tells Dazai he’ll be okay, maybe.
Chūya tells Dazai safety through hands and hands alone.
Tells Dazai trust through hands
tells Dazai love through hands
tells Dazai everything he is unable to articulate, through hands.
Through hands that do nothing other than hover.
Never touching.
He’s telling and showing and trying.
He’s trying.
He is trying.
But it’s hard and Chūya can’t handle it.
Not today.
--
They’re sitting on the floor. They’re staring at a painting.
It’s quiet.
They’re staring and red.
Can this be called art? A painting?
Staring?
Is staring an art?
They stare.
“What is it?”
One has dared to break the silence.
“Nothing.”
It’s unsatisfying and it makes him simmer with sickly rage.
“Bullshit. What is it?”
The other mimics his emotions with near perfection.
“It’s nothing.”
His mimicry isn’t perfect, but almost.
It’s almost.
“You mean you’ve been locked up in this stupid room since yesterday making nothing?”
“Yes.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Hm.”
“What is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Stop lying to me! Why won’t you tell me what it is!?”
“Nothing! It’s nothing!”
Dazai is becoming frantic.
The side that’s been slipping out more as of late.
The side that Chūya really, really can’t handle.
Normally, but especially today.
Yet, he continues to push.
Maybe, because of this, because of his inability to handle Dazai.
It doesn’t make sense, but he does it anyways. He pushes.
“Tell me.”
Maybe he’s cruel.
Or just in the mood for cruelness. Maybe he’s craving sadomasochism. Something he wants and wants and wants until he finally gets
and one bite in
is left unsatisfied.
“I told you! It’s nothing! Why won’t Chūya believe me!”
This is confusing. He is confused. He is confused and things are hurting that shouldn’t be hurting because he’s telling the truth (finally!) he’s telling the truth (for once!) he’s telling the truth and feeling things that he thought and thinks and swears are true.
But are they?
Because he’s also feeling guilty
like he’s overreacting
because he’s always doing that as of late
overreacting.
But Chūya asks again and again and he can’t take it and suddenly it’s not just Chūya who can’t handle him today.
Because he can’t handle him today. Dazai cannot handle Dazai today.
They’re screaming at each other, loud and desperate and purely nonsensical.
Until
“Mori told me to make a self-portrait.”
He whispers it.
Silence.
“It’s… you?”
Silence.
“It’s nothing.”
--
Fuck.
--
Dazai thinks about burning the painting.
Grabbing some gasoline and setting ablaze.
It would be a spectacular way to go out.
But there could be causalities. Bothersome.
Dazai thinks about burying the painting.
Suffocating by premature burial.
Burying it while it’s still living and breathing without dried paint to protect it’s already swollen infrastructure.
Dazai thinks about drowning the painting.
But acrylics are water-resistant and even if it’s drenched it doesn’t seem like that would be enough.
It’s never been enough.
--
They sit and they practice the art of staring.
They sit and stare.
Dark eyes look forward, into red.
Bright eyes are turned to the side, look into dark.
One boy is looking at a painting.
The other is looking at art.
Regardless, they inhale red.
It hurts both of them, as if they were swaddling lungs in each other’s carbon dioxide rather than the breathable.
They exhale poison.
He exhales poison.
He likes to think about that,
how everyone exhales poison.
Maybe Dazai will drink some poison.
Maybe he should bite himself, drink his own blood in a cannibalistic frenzy of masochism because he knows he is poison because he knows he is a noxious gas because he knows Chūya will die of inhalation and toxicity
Because Chūya wouldn’t think twice about continuing to breathe when he shouldn’t.
Because Chūya.
--
He’s given the painting away.
No, not away.
To Mori.
He’s given it to Mori the way he always does.
And Mori touches it, caresses in disgust and agnomical fear.
Dazai shivers at the touch.
Cringes at the caress.
Screams in silence at the disgust at the fear.
Mori looks at the art.
He breaks it in two.
--
It’s a dark room with only the slightest hint of moonlight peeking out from a single stray curtain.
Art is in the middle of the floor. Disheveled and distressed. Torn and broken. Bloody and red.
Dazai is sitting in the middle of the floor.
He hates that painting.
That stupid, infuriating painting.
That cackling criticizing crass creation known as art.
He hates it.
Dazai hates the painting.
--
He’s left the mafia and can’t help but mourn the whole of him he’s left behind.
There is a hole in him, gaping as he mourns Odasaku and also himself.
He sits in a small room, a joke of an apartment. But not a shipping container.
The walls are white.
The floor is white.
He sits and stares at a painting.
Or rather, a canvas. One that will soon be a painting. So he assumes.
A blank canvas.
It’s white.
He’s holding a paintbrush. Has been holding a paintbrush. Has picked up a paintbrush that he’s been holding for three hours.
He hasn’t moved to use the bathroom or eat.
He is sitting and staring and is trying.
Another self-portrait.
A self-portrait of a changed man.
Of a man who’s left the mafia. Who’s working to be “good” or whatever.
Of a man who’s abandoned the broken foundation in search of newness.
Of a man who thinks, rather than believes, he can pursue and achieve newness. Good, newness.
He has paint and canvas and brush yet he has nothing.
He feels like nothing.
He is still nothing.
--
Six months pass and he hasn’t made a single drop
No brush stroke or attempt.
He hasn’t given up, but he hasn’t started and this makes him mad. It always makes him mad, the unfinished un-started unachieved.
He promised Odasaku he would try.
He promised himself he would leave the mafia and try.
And he did try! At least once.
He asked for employment and was told to wait.
But waiting isn’t enough! Waiting isn’t enough.
Because waiting is always bad. Waiting removes the ability to choose.
Waiting removes your ability to choose.
Waiting has always removed his ability to choose.
This is a fact.
A fact of life, a fact of Dazai’s life.
But here he is, waiting. Like a sitting duck. Waiting for “good” to enter his life. To fall claim to his hands and his hands alone.
What a failure. A joke. He’s no better than that laughable apartment he parades as “home”.
He feels like a plant that’s been overwatered with hopes and dreams and potentials.
Because these are things Oda gave to him, neglecting the fact that his roots belong in drought.
Desert climate.
He is a cactus, not a flower. Pointy and harsh and ugly.
Sharp and painful. Not meant to be touched or pet or loved.
He’s not meant to be watered. He’s meant to be left alone. Untouched.
Untouched.
Untouched.
But don’t cacti bloom
and blossom
they blossom sometimes
and—
He is touch-averse, he thinks.
Maybe his painting is too.
If he were a cactus he would not bloom. He would not flower.
And that’s why he hasn’t started. That’s why there’s no paint on the pristine, sparkling clean canvas.
It’s a reflection of him, in that way.
Maybe it is a self-portrait after all.
Maybe he’s a touch-averse canvas.
A touch-averse canvas that’s been touched. Unraveled with greedy eyes searching for meaning or understanding or something, anything other than nothing.
Touched with desperate fingers that pine after all the things it cannot, will not give.
They touch and search and no one cares what the canvas wants.
No one cares about the fucking canvas.
They project
vomit their feelings they’re worthless feelings the things that can’t be articulated aloud only reproduced visually
they selfishly take those images, those concepts, the worst of themselves, those things and force them unto a canvas that cannot consent.
You can paint anything upon it. The phallic, the problematic, the crude, the unholy desires that bury and nestle deep within crooks of black char hearts.
And the canvas can never decide otherwise. It cannot say no or ask for a break.
It can’t protest.
The canvas sits and takes it.
He sat and he took it and now he is all alone in a little room in front of this empty canvas that he cannot bear to mutilate because maybe this canvas is him and maybe this time will be different.
Maybe this time will be different.
He’s never thought this before. Not to himself, not aloud, not to others. Not to Odasaku’s nonexistent ghost or the memory of a redhead with a piping temper.
The idea of a new beginning is frightening to Dazai and he almost wonders if he’s thankful for these two years of forced delay.
He’s sickened by himself, by this sick person of nothing, of wasted hopes and dreams and potentials.
The canvas stares at him, its laughter mocking and criticizing.
The way one would criticize a piece of art. The tables have turned.
The art criticizes the critic. The art has become the critic.
His art is a critic and he is the victim, the criticized and critiqued, the piece on display to be poked and prodded and considered by everyone and for everyone other than self.
Maybe that’s why he hasn’t started. The canvas has been criticizing him.
A sound that maybe could be called a laugh escapes.
What a silly notion.
Just another excuse.
That’s not why he hasn’t started.
--
When he gave Mori the painting, Elise shrieked in terror. Mori himself felt more concern than success. The experiment came burning, crashing to the ground, a failure in every sense of the word.
Was he disappointed? Angered? Upset?
Dazai’s face stings.
His cheek is red and he thinks he has an answer.
At least the portrait is accurate.
--
It’s been two years and Dazai is moving from a small and empty apartment to a small and empty dorm.
It’s been two years and Dazai’s nowhere close to a changed man.
It’s been two years and he digs out a blank canvas covered only in a thick layer of dust.
It makes his throat burn, the dust.
It makes his eyes burn, the dust.
Makes him burn.
And so he lets it burn. Soaks in its smoke as he let’s failure seep into tortured lungs.
Flames lick dance simper burn.
He does not laugh, but he smiles as he thinks he will never willingly create another self-portrait.
--
The Agency has signed up for an art workshop, one of those “Sip and Paint” art and wine nights that have been popular as of late. Ranpo and Yosano drink wine, the kids drink juice, and Dazai swallows anxiety by the gallon.
“We’re going to paint a self-portrait!” The kind, smiling woman who leads the workshop says this as if it’s nothing. As if she’s saying something as mundane as “Have a nice day!”
She has no idea. None of them do, really.
He’s back to where he started. Back to the empty canvas.
The only colors he’s placed on his palette are grays, which are really just shades of black.
The others are painting and laughing. Some are silly, Ranpo paints a piece of candy with a hat and pipe à la Sherlock Holmes. Atsushi paints a little tiger that looks more like a kitten than a beast. Naomi paints a girl with silky black hair cuddled next to a man who could only be her brother. Even Kunikida has painted something nice, a simple reflection of a blonde man with glasses and a notebook.
But his is blank. He’s sitting and smiling as panic builds, rising in his chest. Why is this so hard
why is this hard why is this so hard
why is doing this thing that
that’s so easy
this thing that he should be able to do
this thing he knows he can do
why is it so hard?
They have no expectations of him. Yet it feels as though they are eating him with ravenous eyes.
They’re staring, aren’t they. They must be. They are. They’re staring with the expectations he knows they don’t have.
But somehow they’re there.
They snuck in
through a backdoor
an open port.
Expectations he can’t meet. Expectations that are not a blank canvas, but him, expectations to see him to see who he is who Dazai is.
They want to see who Dazai is.
Everyone wants to see who Dazai is. Everyone except Dazai.
He’s shaking and he think he might break, might snap in two.
Like that painting given to Mori.
His chest is tight and he’s struggling to breathe but he hides it well, behind a smile and fake happiness.
Even as Atsushi asks, “Do you know what you’re going to paint Dazai-san?”
Even as Kyouka says, “You can use my paint if you don’t like your colors.”
Even as Yosano asks, “Are you feeling okay?”
“Myself, duh~” he lies.
“Sure, I’ll think about it, thanks Kyouka-chan!” he lies.
“Just dandy!” he lies.
He’s a liar. A liar and failure with a tight chest and an inability to breathe.
An hour passes and the only masterpiece before him is a paintbrush that’s been stripped of the black plastic-y coating protecting its now-exposed wooden base.
Another hour and he’s made a single mark.
It was an accident, actually.
It wasn’t even his mark. Atsushi stood up and tripped, sending a speck of paint from his brush flying onto the canvas.
A speck of blue paint.
Blue.
He’s thinking about this and wondering.
He’s thinking about this and wondering.
He’s thinking about this and actually
actually
maybe
at this exact moment in time
just this once
it’s okay.
He’s okay with that, with this, with this speck of blue on a white canvas he calls a self-portrait.
Maybe that’s him. He’s thinking it’s him and he’s
he’s—
That could be him!
he thinks this is excitement.
This can be him.
Maybe it’s him. Maybe he’s done. Maybe he’ll sign his name and call it: self.
Because he’s not there but he wants to be.
He’s not a good person but maybe he’s taken a step.
He’s not an Odasaku or a Chūya, but he’s no longer a Mori.
He’s not as empty as he once was, as red as he once was, as raw as he once was.
He’s tempted to paint a sad smiley, add another blue speck and a u-shaped mouth.
He’s tempted, but he doesn’t.
Not today.
Not today, because today he’s already made more than enough steps.
The last hour passes and they’ve finished up. The instructor asks them each to present.
The pictures behind and beside his are pretty, funny, unique. Even Jun'ichirō’s poorly drawn stick figures and Kenji’s confusing mess of bright yellows and shimmery green are entertaining to look at.
They get to Dazai’s and Kunikida’s quick to scold. To yell at him for taking this “important time for staff bonding” as a joke. For wasting this woman’s time and being too lazy to even try.
Sharp pain is stabbing at him and it hurts in ways he rarely experiences at the Agency.
His heart feels like it was struck with a hammer and nail. He feels it twitch and twinge at the vile words that perfectly outline, dictate his violent inadequacy.
Dazai is feeling inadequate
Dazai is feeling pain feeling sad feeling hurt feeling like he wants to stop off at a convenience store on his way home to buy bleach instead of dinner
and he’s ready to laugh it off the way he always does
because he’s probably overreacting
he must be overreacting because he always is
he’s sure he’s overreacting and he’s certain he should laugh this off—
a feminine voice interrupts.
“Pardon me, Kunikida-san,” she says, “we as observers cannot claim a definition of art or effort. There is paint on his canvas, and even if there wasn’t,” she smiles, “that’s more than acceptable in my art class. Thank you for sharing, Dazai-san.”
This time, it’s Kunikida who is red.
Red with embarrassment and shame.
Dazai is struck speechless. Awestruck with a sensation he thinks is gratitude.
He smiles softly.
It’s the most honest look he’s worn in the room all day.
--
He gets back to his empty agency dorm, to his bare white walls and expressionless abode.
He takes out the 4 command strips Kyouka gave to him before they were dismissed and he finds the ugliest, emptiest, hardest to reach wall. It’s a thin, narrow opening awkwardly placed behind his bedroom door.
He flips the canvas vertically and mounts it perfectly within the confines of the ugly narrow no-longer-empty wall.
It fits perfect.
The wall is perfect in its imperfection.
The painting is perfect and Dazai is perfect and even if his perfection is in the form of suffering and imperfection and being so perfectly wrong, that’s still perfect.
Dazai is still perfect.
--
Dazai is sitting in a mostly empty room staring at a mostly empty wall feeling mostly empty.
But mostly is not fully, and for this he’s mostly okay.
Mostly okay with being a speck.
Mostly okay with being accidental blue.
Mostly okay with his mostly empty canvas.