Emotions [Dazai x Reader] ✓

5 | Gun and Mum

I'd been sitting in Chuuya's office for the best part of a few hours, having written down and summarised all information I'd gathered from previous hostages. I was working with the Mafia for a couple of weeks now, and yet I wasn't trusted with dealing with real cases. Perhaps they thought I wasn't capable enough for dealing with all these shootings and running around from pole to pole as these people had done - they weren't wrong though.

From my seat, I noticed the drawer at Chuuya's desk to be slightly opened, and my curiosity was fed far beyond ordinary levels as a product of boredom. I stood up from the chair I had been sitting on and stalked to the drawer, carefully opening it to avoid the loud wood scratching against itself and calling attention. Inside it was nothing but one item: a gun.

Is this everything the mafia thinks they need?

Yes, you're silly to pick up a gun that does not belong to you - or any for that matter - especially if you have no protection against fingerprints rubbing off on it, but once curiosity truly hit all rational thoughts were cast aside. I analysed the cold metal instrument in my hand, obviously unaware of how it truly worked; you have a trigger, but don't you have to pull something back for it to work or something?

Just then the door burst open, my first response being to drop the gun on the desktop and look down at it guiltily. Don't be Chuuya, please, I swear I wasn't planning to shoot anybody. 'I-I wasn't - no, I didn't mean to - Curiosity killed the cat, I know -'

'Meow.'

I looked up confusedly, simply to be greeted by a tall, smug-looking male standing by the door. 'Dazai.' I sighed.

'I didn't know you had an interest in those.'

'I don't. The drawer was ajar, I got curious. Please don't tell Chuuya, please. He's not given me permission to touch his belongings.'

He closed the door behind him and chuckled. 'If it's in there it means something, don't you think?' I stopped for a while and looked at it. 'If that's here and he's not it only means he finds no use for that. He'd probably kiss you if you took that from his office,' He cringed at his own remark 'Don't do that, he reeks of mushroom villages and little elves.'

I giggled at his unintentional humorous comment, picking the gun up and setting it back in its seat inside the drawer. 'You seem close, the two of you.'

'You've got it wrong, you have. I'd throw a party if he announced his resignation. Lots of balloons and cake and drinks. His favourite drinks actually, just to pull the nerve.'

I sat down on Chuuya's desk chair, these past few weeks having made me more relaxed to Dazai's presence; he retained his odd persona but I'd simply got more accustomed to it. Oda was right, he was perhaps starting to grow on me.

'Oh, I just remembered,' I placed my open palm facing up on the desk and looked at him. 'I've figured on how to read an individual after a while without having to touch them a second time.'

'You didn't know how to do that before?' he questioned with childish innocence.

'I told you I didn't really put too much thought into it. But I've figured it out now; want Chuuya's reading or not?'

He stopped and stared at my palm for a while. 'Sure, why not.'

I concentrated my thoughts on Chuuya then, having realised that to be my way of reflecting the status of his emotions while he himself had not been present in the room. He watched the lines of each finger glow, setting the bar and stopping where appropriate and respective to Chuuya's current emotions. I ran him through what each finger meant, using the mnemonic F.L.A.S.H. indicating that each emotion represented a finger, each starting from my pinky (fear).

He blankly stared at my middle finger as though he had already expected that to have been the highest and brightest glow within all five. 'Of course he's angry. Bet you he's somewhere where booze isn't.'

'He drinks?'

'You didn't know?' I shook my head. It's true I still had a few gaps of knowledge on my colleagues and superiors in the Mafia, but the smell of alcohol had not been present on my superior every time we were together.

For a while, we sat in silence, not quite awkward nor comforting, just silence. Then he spoke up. 'Can you read your own emotions?'

I didn't reply. Yes, I could, but I wasn't ready to share those, especially not with someone who I hadn't quite acquainted properly with - probably Oda for that matter, but not Dazai. 'That's enough about me. I'm curious about your ability.'

He did not reply either.

Way to turn neutral silence to a suffocating one.

He sat on the desktop, his back facing me, and fiddled with the end of his dark coat, tugging at an invisible dirty patch to busy himself. 'What made you so indifferent to people?'

'Huh?' He looked back at me, the familiar dark hue on them. 'I don't get your question. Just a while back you called me kind for erasing those men's emotions before they were killed by God knows who-'

'That's guilt playing the protagonist in your story. You did that because you were afraid.'

I would have protested, but part of me feared any dispute further this point would lead us nowhere, so I stayed quiet. And silence invaded again. He pushed himself off the desktop and stretched his arms out, heaving out a groan. 'That reminds me,' he began again, relaxing his muscles by placing his hands back in his pockets and smiling as he returned to looking at me. 'There's someone who wants to see you. In the basement.'

'Tell them I'm busy with -'

'How would you like to meet your mum again?' I looked up at him, that dreaded grin threatening to stay. He seemed pleased, but I wasn't. I shot up from the chair and glared at him. 'She came to us -'

I wrapped my fingers around the knot of his tie, tightening the grip around it to lower him to my eye level. 'I want that woman gone -'

He brought out his cellphone - evidently having been in a call since he'd first walked in - his expression remaining unchanged. 'Got that?'

'Roger.' the male receiver responded, hanging the call almost immediately.

I let go of his tie and rushed out of the office, not caring for the door having been left wide open or me bumping into several mafiosos in the rush to get to the basement. The scent of fresh blood was prominent in the room, and several agents stood in formation in a line by the bottom of the stairs, blocking my view from the scene before them. 'Excuse you,' I snarled, pushing in-between a couple of them and squeezing myself forward.

It was too late, of course.

The corpse of the woman who'd given birth to me lay before my eyes, chest exposed to a handful of bullet holes having penetrated deep into where her heart should've been. Her head was down in defeat against death, and a stream of blood ran from her temple, drawing a trail along her side profile. She looked ready to be taken by the Grim Reaper, only I wouldn't plead with him to spare her.

Familiar clicks of heels calmly made their way forward towards us, stopping just behind me. I turned around slowly and looked Dazai straight in the eye, noticing his cheerful glow no longer present, but replaced with an emotionless sea of ... nothing.

'I hate you.'

'Me too.'

I reached my arm towards him to get a hold of any surface of skin I possibly could, to attempt a reset of emotions on him (the only way I saw revenge possible with just the use of my ability) but he caught my wrist in his hand, a bright blue light spawning from our contact, half-blinding me in the process.

My head started spinning and he became a smudge of colours before me. His fingers were numbing cold against the bare skin of my arm. My legs gave up strength and I could no longer stand on my own.

'Thank you,' I breathed out and then must've passed out.