Emotions [Dazai x Reader] ✓

Epilogue | Unexpected Rendevoz

The unfortunate events had left the man hopeless,
His only source of light: gone.
The path he took now led him nowhere; a road
only a person who has fallen walks. To his fortune,
he slowly became emotionless.
The man did not crave or fear death's presence,
But welcomed it with open arms.

I know you're no longer here, but you've probably become tired of me reciting the poem - which she wrote - countless times over your grave, haven't you, Odasaku?

I heaved out a sigh and rested the back of my head on the cold stone carved with his name, looking up at the blossoming leaves above it - you've been buried in a nice spot, Odasaku.

Subtle steps approached from behind, stopping at a distance to acknowledge the grave.

'Atsushi Nakajima.'

'Yes?'

'Do you know whose grave this is?'

'No, but it's someone dear to you, right?'

I paused and let out a short, breathy chuckle. 'What makes you think that?'

'I've never seen you pay a visit to a grave.

'Does it look like I'm visiting a grave to you?'

'It does. Why?'

The memories of Odasaku's last moments played in my mind, vivid and lively as though it had happened the previous day.

'Was it someone you were in love with?'

I pushed myself up and stretched out the muscle cramps of having sat down for longer than my conscience had been aware of. 'If it was a woman I loved, I would've died with her.' He mumbled. 'Did you say something?'

He denied any form of input. Swiftly changing the subject, he informed me of a meeting which Kunikida had requested my presence at, but I currently felt the need to repose from indulging in agency business.

'Tell him I'm not going,' I affirmed as I walked away from the grave, hands thrown behind my head to stretch out the muscles of my arms.

'But -'

He proceeded to protest against the neglect which I had for my duties (as he called it), refusing to stop following me until he could at least earn an "I'll think about it" for an answer.

I stopped far from the fountain at the city square. Various bouquets of flowers were placed by its stone edge, along with bearings of home-grown vegetables and fruits which the deceased had lived to enjoy in his earlier years.

The elderly hunchback artist who had sat there only just a few months ago had been one I had acquainted with at some point, only on a few occasions when I did pass the square while on a job; he remembered me from the Mafia.

"The boy who gave me the bag with the canvas for the pretty lady" he called me - his memory seemed to be one which worked far beyond human comprehension. My first meeting of the man had not lasted even five minutes, yet he managed to draw each line of my face somewhere deep in his mind, and store it until the last of our encounters.

Knelt by his picture - one which a neighbour may have brought in, no doubt - was a single woman planting in the soil the seed of what could be assumed to be the future blossom of a flower gifted to the dead; she was not bothered by the dirt for she wore no gloves, and her skin became covered with earth. Was planting flowers for the dead allowed anywhere outside a cemetery?

'Excuse me,' my white-haired subordinate addressed, approaching the woman and bending over offered a small tissue which he may have been storing in his back pocket - in case you had to cry and beg over me denying Kunikida's order to my presence to persuade me to go? Ah, well, prepared nonetheless.