Emotions [Dazai x Reader] ✓

14 | Heed and Hurt

The Port Mafia boss had summoned me on an empty afternoon, where he must've been aware no hostages had been brought in for questioning and I idly sat in Chuuya's office while he had been absent on a mission of his own.

'I'm aware your ability isn't compatible for battle, so I gathered I'd give you some additional work to complete inside the building,' he started, motioning for me to take a seat while he talked me through his arrangements. 'You are to receive a share of my workload for a few days, that is, while I am absent for a short trip to negotiate with fellow enemy associations. I trust this will not be anything you cannot handle.'

He proposed that I receive all calls to the headquarters and dealt with a handful of mission assignments a day in his absence, but he assured me it was a matter I could not handle; true, it wasn't, but it fatigued me.

For the next handful of days, I became disgusted by the sound of the phone ringing every quarter of an hour or so, every individual caller having a folder with their name labelled on it stored inside a file cabinet, the hinges threatening to come off completely from the repetitious cycle of my opening and closing its drawer. Every call was the same, in one way or another; 'This is the Port Mafia's headquarters: whom am I speaking with?', followed by the caller addressing themselves, me searching in the cabinet for their name and jotting down their business almost word by word - if I'd have written this quick in school maybe I could've finished those timed-essays and achieved better grades. Besides the point -

At times I also felt like throwing said phone out the window. The ringtone often hit close to home; when I was a mere child, playing with my toys alone or simply watching TV, my entertainment would be threatened by the ringing of the landline phone which echoed its wailing from the hallway all around the house: 'We've got a customer, [Y/N]. Hurry and put on some decent clothes; you have 10 minutes.' my mother used to say, taking up the phone and forcing me to rush up to my bedroom and reach for any garment that I knew would suit my mom's tastes: usually a dress with patterned flowers or polka dots which pleased most customers - especially male - persuading them to return and therefore flaring profit.

Now that I think about it, why have I been thinking about my past so much lately?

The phone rang again. I picked it and followed the usual algorithm. But to differ from previous times, I received a visitor in the office, and I was not able to look up to greet them as my hand cramped to keep up with the fast-paced speaker on the other side of the landline.

'Yes, understood. I will look into it. Thank you for your time. Goodbye.' I dismissed the caller, placing the phone back in its seat and replacing the empty space in the cabinet with the recently amended file. 'How may I help?' I addressed whoever stood by the desk, still not looking up to identify who it had been.

I did not receive a reply.

I looked up and caught a glimpse of the bandaged male, the memory of our most recent encounter teasing at my ability to stay calm - Akutagawa's incident in the basement.

'What do you want?'

He placed a small bag at the edge of the desk, which I assumed to be fresh food which he had brought recently from the streets. The smell of the deep-fried delicacy inside filled my nostrils with content, and my stomach signalled that it had been starving for the contents which were kept from my sight by the plastic material of the bag and the paper lid of the small paper box.

'Don't just stare at it; dig in.'

'I'm working right now, I can't.'

He offered to replace my position while I sat beside him on a small stool, chewing and biting at the container of mouth-watering goodies hungrily, unaware of how starved I'd been from the heavy workload I'd been assigned. He smiled as he placed the phone down from his third call, and looked at me. 'I didn't know you liked street food that much.'