Osamu Dazai and the Dark Era

by Kafka Asagiri

  “I really wasn’t supposed to tell you any of that,” Ango mentioned. “Even the fact that we met here would be a huge problem if the higher-ups in the Home Affairs Ministry ever find out. I’ll need to go into hiding for the time being.”

  Dazai looked at Ango, then beamed as he said, “Oh my. It almost sounds like you think you’ll be able to leave here alive, Ango.”

  The air froze. Ango’s expression slowly faded away, but Dazai was still smiling.

  “I mean, you know what I’m saying, right? An elusive, secret agency of skill users shrouded in darkness—a group of mythical status that sends shivers down the spines of all criminal syndicates in the country—and one of the members from that organization is here right before my eyes. The amount of information I want out of you could create a tome thicker than the dictionary itself. Am I wrong?”

  I naturally asked Dazai what was on my mind. “Do you plan on turning this place into a war zone?”

  Ango didn’t even flinch. His face was frozen into an ambiguous smirk. He stared at Dazai as if his eyes were locked in place.

  “It’s my fault,” Ango said as if he had given up. “I made a mistake. I assumed that this place was the one place we could meet that transcended status or rank. I wouldn’t want to cause any trouble here, so do to me as you will. I won’t resist.”

  Ango ought to have known just how horrifying Mafia torture was. There was no hope for him to return to the Special Division for Unusual Powers alive. Even if I took Ango’s side there, nothing would change. There was no way to break out of Dazai’s trap around the bar’s perimeter, and the orphans at the restaurant would be killed if I betrayed the Mafia.

  “Ango.” Dazai quietly spoke up, turning his hand back and forth as if to inspect both sides. “If I make just one phone call, my men will immediately surround the place. But they still haven’t made a move. Get out of here before I change my mind.”

  Ango tried to say something, but he swallowed his words.

  “I’m not sad. I knew from the very beginning,” Dazai said. His face was a blank mask now. “It didn’t matter whether you were with the Special Division for Unusual Powers. I always lose the things I don’t want to lose the most. That’s why I don’t feel anything anymore. The moment you get your hands on something worth going after, you lose it. That’s just how things are. There is nothing worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a life of suffering.”

  I stared at Dazai. We had known each other for a while, but this was the first time he’d ever opened up about himself. I could see a thorn the size of a harpoon wedged deeply into his life.

  “Dazai, Odasaku, I am no different. As part of an underground organization whose duties must be kept secret, as a skill user who hunts other skill users, I have been engulfed in the darkness of the government for too long. I shall never walk in the light again.” Ango looked at us and continued, “If there ever comes a time when the Division and the Mafia no longer exist…if we’re ever freed from the confines of our work…do you think we can drink here again like this?”

  “Don’t say any more, Ango,” a voice said nearby. It was my voice. “Just don’t.”

  Ango shook his head, seemingly hurt. Then he gradually stood from his stool and slowly left the bar, his eyes downcast as if he was listening carefully to the sound of his own footsteps. I figured that was probably the last time I would ever see him. I looked to the seat he had been in to find something placed on the table next to his empty glass. After picking it up, I showed Dazai.

  It was the photo we’d taken in that very bar only a few days ago. All three of us were laughing and smiling.

  CHAPTER IV

  People’s feelings reflect the weather, but the weather doesn’t reciprocate. The bright, warm sun shone down on Yokohama that day as I walked through the city with a frown. I was sure I looked even grumpier than usual, since I was carrying stuff in both hands. I wasn’t actually in a bad mood, though. It was merely a problem of balance because my hands were full with bags of toys and sweets. You’d need a little training to carry these with a smile.

  They were for the kids. I’d picked up some presents for them, since I was sure they were getting sick of the refugee life. In fact, they were probably bored to tears hiding in the safe house Dazai prepared for them, so I was a little worried this wouldn’t be enough of a bribe to bring smiles to their faces. After all, what’s enough for adults is never enough for kids.

  A young man riding a bicycle passed by while whistling. Young children ran ahead of their mother in pursuit of some great quarry that only they could see. I couldn’t help but feel as though the war between two crime syndicates was taking place on the opposite side of the world.

  I thought about Mimic while I walked. I thought about the lonely soldiers who lived to die. Gide said he’d make me understand. Those words were a curse to drag me into battle. But at the same time, they were the heartfelt screams of a young child. The only ones who could understand him were his men or his enemy—and it looked as if he wanted me to become the latter.

  I didn’t know whether killing each other was the right thing. At this rate, the war was going to continue until either the Mafia or Mimic was destroyed. Was there no way to end this peacefully somehow? Was there no way I could both understand them and still draw my modest boundary lines?

  I also had to think about the kids. I planned on quitting the Mafia once they became independent enough to live on their own without my help. I didn’t know when that would be, but I knew it would come one day. The kids would grow into adults. Some might work at an office, some might become engineers, and others might even become professional baseball players. The oldest apparently dreamed of being in the Mafia like me, which was headache inducing, but, well, I figured I’d be able to talk him out of it. Once that all happened, I could finally toss my gun aside, sit at a desk somewhere I could see the ocean, and start writing my novel.

  When I arrived in front of the building, I paused for a moment. The place Dazai found for the kids to stay in was an import license office affiliated with the Mafia. It was a two-story blue building by the ocean that had been baptized with rust from top to bottom by the sea breeze. To the side of the building was a spacious shared parking lot occupied by a moss-colored bus with nothing better to do.

  From what I was told, Dazai rented out the entire building, so the employees there had been sent to a completely different office. He always went to extremes, but this measure was also proof that Dazai believed there was a high chance of the kids being targeted. With my hands full, I headed up the stairs while going over in my mind the list of who’d get which toy. After walking down the hallway, I opened the door to the meeting room the kids were supposedly using.

  Nobody was inside. The desk had been overturned, there were holes in the wall, and the floor was scuffed, apparently from having something heavy dragged across it. The scattered crayons on the floor were crushed under large footprints. I heard a heavy thud as something hit the floor, then realized I had dropped the bags I was carrying. I began to run almost unconsciously. Rushing out of the meeting room, I descended the staircase in practically a single leap.

  Once I got out of the building, I saw the undersized moss-colored bus in the parking lot starting to drive off.

  As I looked at the rear window, I saw someone’s hand reach out through the slightly opened curtains. The small hand banged against the glass. I could also see a person’s face in the back seat; it was a young boy whose eyes were swollen from being punched.

  The moment the boy saw me, his eyes flew open. It was the oldest kid whose dream was to join the Mafia one day. Noticing my gaze, he hurriedly pulled the curtains wide-open. Behind him were the other kids—he’d opened the curtains to show them to me.

  The next moment, a Mimic soldier on the bus grabbed him by the shoulder and viciously threw him backward. The curtains were then yanked shut, and the boy disappeared behind them.

  I desperately sprinted after the bus so hard that my kn
ees were almost hitting my chin. The driver apparently noticed and sped up. I rushed out toward the street, placed a hand on the guardrail, then leaped over it to run parallel with the bus. The vehicle gradually drove faster. I reflexively reached under my coat, but I’d left my guns behind that day. What kind of Mafia member leaves his guns behind?

  The light at the intersection was about to turn red, but the bus swerved left, barely even slowing down as the surrounding cars honked their horns. I watched where the bus was headed—there was a huge curve that went under the bridge and connected to the highway. I would have no chance of catching up with the bus if it made it that far. I had to end this before then. I dashed up the nearby staircase to the pedestrian overpass in three jumps, then sprinted to the middle before leaping to the nearby traffic overpass.

  The overpass was protected with wire netting, which I grabbed onto with one hand to catch myself from falling. Then I climbed up the netting and stood on top of the overpass. Next, I rushed down the concrete until I approached an area that intersected with the road below. At that very moment, the bus began to pass below my feet.

  I waited until the time was just right to jump. My coat billowed with air and rustled in the wind. I landed on the roof of a red minivan that was driving in front of the bus, throwing out my hand and one knee to blunt the fall. I heard someone inside the minivan scream.

  When I turned around, I saw the bus and a Mimic soldier in gray behind the wheel. He fastened his gaze on me with bloodshot eyes. There were at least two enemies on that bus. They were military, and almost certainly armed. I, on the other hand, had no backup or weapon to defend myself with. But I would be able to handle things as long as I got just one look at the enemy. The bus itself sped up, closing in on the minivan. It looked as if the bus driver wanted to hit me along with the car. In this kind of situation, I’d normally want to cower and run the other way—that is, if I hadn’t seen the kid’s swollen face moments prior.

  After a brief yet silent apology, I violently kicked the minivan’s side-view mirror with my heel. The metal snapped as the mirror lazily fell, only to dangle by the vehicle’s side. Right as I reached out and tore it off, the bus rammed the red minivan. I desperately latched on as the car drastically swerved to the side, and then I threw the side-view mirror in my hand directly at the Mimic soldier driving the bus. The oversize red-painted mirror shattered the front window and smashed straight into the driver’s face before he could draw his gun. Immediately, he slammed on the brakes as he began to lose consciousness. Like an intoxicated rhinoceros, the bus swerved back and forth before eventually coming to a stop. Meanwhile, the minivan I was standing on also came to a halt as if it had drawn its last breath. I jumped off the roof.

  When I faced the bus, I got a terrible feeling, as if someone had just put my heart in a vise. Alarm bells relentlessly pounded in my head. My vision flashed red and white. Before I’d even realized it, I was already sprinting.

  —“I will make you understand me.”

  The driver was holding some kind of signal transmitter. I already knew what that meant. My body, however, hadn’t caught up yet. A single moment that felt like an eternity passed by. The Mimic soldier pressed the switch on the transmitter.

  And just like that, the bus instantly exploded.

  My body was blasted back by a wall of air. I lost consciousness as I flew through the sky, but my back crashed into a nearby car, jolting me awake. I looked at the bus. Pillars of fire rose out of each window as it flew in the air almost as high as the eye could see. After briefly spinning through the air, it quickly fell onto the side of the road.

  A moment went by before shards of glass rained from above. I tried to rush over. I tried to sprint to the bus even if it would only get me there a second faster. But in reality, all I did was fall face-first and writhe pathetically on the hard asphalt. The bus went up in flames. It lay on its side, bent in the middle. I tasted blood in the back of my throat. There was a deafening ringing in my ears, and I could barely hear a thing.

  —“Like, he treats us all like kids, but we’re all adults here, ya know?”

  My throat hurt. I couldn’t breathe. I could hear someone’s screams from afar. I realized—because my throat was in so much pain—that the one screaming was me.

  “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!”

  A small sightseeing ship floated in the Yokohama Bay. Gentle waves glittered in the rays of sun from a crystal-clear sky. The ship quietly drifted through the waters as it bathed in the reflected glare.

  Only a few people were on board the vessel. In the center stood a young man with scholarly features and round glasses—Ango Sakaguchi, an agent with the Special Division for Unusual Powers. A man was sitting to his right.

  “Ango, it’s been a while. Thanks for inviting me. How have things been since returning to your real job?”

  A man with slicked-back black hair and a white coat—the Port Mafia boss, Ougai Mori—spoke to Ango in a friendly manner.

  “……” Without saying a word, Ango simply lowered his gaze nervously.

  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t pick on my youngster here, Mafia leader.”

  Sitting on Ango’s other side was a tall, middle-aged man with white hair who towered over the rest of the people on the boat. He was Chief Taneda, the commander in chief of the Home Affairs Ministry’s Special Division for Unusual Powers.

  Behind the Mafia boss and the Division chief respectively were men in black suits standing guard and the Special Forces in black. However, not a single soul was armed.

  His expression strained with tension, Ango said, “Thank you for coming today. Once again, this is an unofficial meeting. All audio and visual recordings or physical intervention by anyone other than those present will be treated as acts of treachery, and the meeting will be immediately terminated.”

  Ango glanced at the bay as he spoke. Men from each organization secretly, or perhaps openly, waited on land off in the distance. In the unlikely case that one party decided to betray and kill the other during the meeting, the injured party’s subordinates on the coast would immediately annihilate the enemy. This meeting was created on a state of delicate balance with each party holding a knife to the other’s throat.

  “My little Elise has been nagging me to buy her ice cream on the way home. Do you know of any good places, Chief Taneda?”

  “Ha-ha-ha. Well, isn’t that sweet.” Chief Taneda laughed while cooling himself off with the fan in his hand. “Maybe I should pick something up for the bureaucrats waiting for my report back at the Home Affairs Ministry, too. They’d love to have your head, I’ll tell ya.”

  Two Mafia subordinates waiting behind their boss started to shake with rage. However, the boss simply smirked with an air of indifference.

  “Feigning concern for the higher-ups at the Home Affairs Ministry to boost your reputation? Government officials always seem to have something to worry about, don’t they, Chief Taneda?”

  “Oh, it’s a trifling concern when compared with someone who has to hide in the sewers in fear of getting squashed by the government.”

  The two men spoke and looked as if they were playing shogi under the eaves of a house together. But the designated mediator, Ango, who was standing in the middle, couldn’t stop himself from breaking into a cold sweat. If the two men before him seriously went at it, then Yokohama would become a city of corpses before three days had passed.

  “Now, let’s talk business,” said Ango. Even the Division’s elite needed to exercise utmost caution when interrupting these two. “Mr. Taneda of the Special Division for Unusual Powers has two requests for Mr. Ougai of the Port Mafia. First, you are to neither concern yourself with nor inflict harm on me, Ango. Next, you are to wipe out the European crime syndicate, Mimic, that illegally entered Japan. Do you accept?”

  “I have no problems with the first condition. Personally, I’m actually extremely grateful to you, Ango. You’re talented, and you supported me a great deal with my work, r
egardless of the fact that it was part of your job as an undercover agent. Additionally, thanks to your mediation, I was able to have this meeting with the Special Division for Unusual Powers. I almost want to embrace you and send you a bouquet of flowers.”

  “Then—”

  “However, I cannot make a definite promise in regard to your second request. Mimic is a horrifying group, after all. We’re still under a lot of pressure thanks to them. If I could, I’d rather just run away crying. It’s that bad.”

  Ougai looked at Taneda with an indiscernible smile. A piercing flash of light illuminated the depths of Taneda’s eyes. He closed them before giving Ango a signal with his gaze.

  “Next, the Port Mafia requests that the Special Division for Unusual Powers—”

  Chief Taneda let out a short, deep sigh. Then he pulled a black envelope out of his suit.

  Meaningless images swirled in my head. I was standing in a white, barren hotel room. Next, I was standing in the planted forest in front of the art museum again. After that, I was on the restaurant’s second floor.

  —“Sakunosuke Oda, a peculiar mafioso who believes killing is never the answer.”

  I was in the waste-ridden back alley, then the quiet bar in the middle of the night; then I was riding the elevator at the Mafia headquarters. After that, I was sitting in the seat by the window at the café on a rainy day.

  —“Writing novels is writing people.”

  —“You’re perfectly qualified.”

  I wondered if that man with the mustache was serious about what he said. Or was he just trying to make me feel better? Did I really deserve to write about people? Even if what he’d said had been true, it was all in the past. I no longer had that right.

  At the site of the explosion, I somehow managed to stagger to my feet and check inside the bus. I shouldn’t have; it would’ve been easy to simply imagine what it was like inside. After that, I decided to leave the scene before it drew too much attention. I went over to the restaurant.