Bungo Stray Dogs - Headcanons x Reader - First Meeting (Part 2)
Here are the links to the previous chapters : 1
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Osamu
Yokohama had that particular way of swallowing people.
Not brutally. No, it was far more subtle than that. The city took its time. It slipped under the skin through the smells of salt and motor oil rising from the port, through the constant low sound of its alleyways that crossed, doubled back, led nowhere and everywhere at once. It infiltrated habits without you noticing, and one fine morning you woke up understanding that you could no longer imagine living anywhere else.
(Y/n) (l/n) wasn't there yet.
But she was beginning to understand the mechanism.
It had been three weeks since she had moved into the too-small apartment in the Kannai district. Three weeks of learning the routes, the shops, the neighborhood faces. Three weeks of finding her footing in a city that seemed to have none that were fixed. As if Yokohama reinvented itself every morning, indifferent to those who tried to understand it.
She had come here for that, in a way. To start over somewhere that didn't know her.
That Tuesday, she had decided to eat outside.
The canal ran along the edge of the commercial district in relative quiet at that hour of the afternoon. The stone steps that descended to the water offered an unobstructed view of the rooftops and a semblance of solitude that (y/n) had learned to hunt down like treasure. She had settled there, her bento on her knees, her (h/c) hair pulled back, her (e/c) eyes resting on the reflection of the sky in the dark water.
That's when she had noticed him.
At first, she had thought it was an illusion. An anomaly. Something her eyes had misinterpreted in the white afternoon light.
But no.
There really was a man lying in the canal.
Tall, in his twenties, dark brown slightly wavy hair floating gently around his face turned toward the sky. Arms outstretched. Eyes closed. A long beige coat spread around him like the wings of a bird that had given up on flying. He was motionless, disconcertingly calm, with the peaceful expression of someone who had decided that here, exactly here, was where his life would stop.
Problem: the water barely reached the middle of his back.
(Y/n) had stared at the scene for a long moment. Then she had looked around to see if anyone else found this alarming.
Nobody. An old man was reading his newspaper on a bench without looking up. Two students were crossing the bridge above, chatting. A crow, perched on the opposite stone ledge, was staring at the lying man with what resembled very precisely disdain.
Right, she had thought. Right, so that's what Yokohama is.
She had put down her bento box. She didn't quite know why she had decided to speak. By reflex, perhaps, or because continuing to eat while ignoring a man lying in a canal seemed difficult to justify morally.
- Do you need help?!
The man hadn't startled. He hadn't moved at all, except to let a slow sigh filter between his lips, as if it were she who was disturbing him.
- Is that a philosophical or practical question?
He's mocking me. The voice was too drawling, too amused. Not the voice of someone in distress. He's an eccentric.
- ...Both? she had replied cautiously.
- Then yes, in a sense. But I'm managing quite well, thank you. This is my sixth attempt this week, you know. Monday, I tried to choke on an onigiri that was too big. It didn't work, but I had quite a scare. Tuesday, I attempted electrocution with a hairdryer, except I'd forgotten to plug it in. Wednesday, I decided to fry myself by jumping into the hot oil of a restaurant. They threw me out before anything came of it, and on top of that they made me pay for the damages. Today, I had high hopes for this canal.
He paused.
- Apparently Yokohama refuses to cooperate.
(Y/n) had opened her mouth. Closed it again.
The onigiri. The unplugged hairdryer. The frying oil and the bill. There was something objectively absurd in all of this. The carefully chronological list, the breezy tone, the way he had said it as if he were commentating on the weather, and she had felt a laugh rising that she had swallowed in time.
Because something else had lodged in a corner of her mind at the same moment. The way he had said sixth attempt. Not with an emphatic touch of self-deprecation, not overdramatizing. Just... factually. Like enumerating appointments in a slightly full schedule.
He's joking, she had told herself. Obviously he's joking.
- You keep a register? she had asked, choosing to play along.
- A simple notebook. With columns. Method, weather conditions, reason for failure. It's very instructive. I could write a book, if I had the patience. But that would imply staying alive long enough to finish it, which poses an obvious logistical problem.
- And now you've failed again?
- It was deeper in my memory.
***
(Y/n) should have left.
She knew that. She had a bento to finish, a journey home to make, a mental shopping list not to forget. But there was an empty apartment waiting for her on the other side of the city, and no pressing reason to return to it. And—she hadn't admitted it to herself right away—there was also this man she couldn't quite take her eyes off, like you can't look away from a flame when you don't know whether it's going to go out or burn more brightly.
So she had stayed.
The man had climbed out of the canal with disconcerting ease, shaking his sleeves with a weary gesture, as if finding oneself soaked to the shoulder blades were a minor inconvenience in an otherwise rather full day. Bandages wound tightly ran along his arms, visible with his sleeves pushed up. Others disappeared beneath the collar of his striped shirt.
(Y/n) had looked at the bandages a second too long. Then she had looked elsewhere.
He had settled on the steps, crossed his arms over his knees with the nonchalance of someone who had just come back from a walk, and looked at her. Really looked at her this time, with an eye that lingered a little too long on her face to be entirely innocent.
- Actually, since you're here and you seem like a person of taste... wouldn't you want to die with me? A shinjū would be so much more romantic than a solitary canal. We could choose the place together, set a date, perhaps have dinner first. I've heard that the restaurant on the corner of Benten Street has an excellent seasonal menu. Might as well leave on a full stomach.
He's joking. That was (y/n)'s first thought, clear and immediate. It's a joke. The kind of absurd thing you say to throw someone off.
But the doubt arrived just after, slower, colder. Because he wasn't smiling the way you smile when you're waiting for a reaction to a joke. He was watching her, that was all. With that slightly tilted expression, perfectly relaxed, as if her answer genuinely interested him, whatever it might be.
That was the problem with this man: he was ridiculous and knew it, he had just drowned himself in fifteen centimeters of water and spoken about it with the disappointed enthusiasm of a researcher whose experiment had failed, and at the same time he was there, with his bandages and his notebook of attempts and his air of having absolutely nothing to lose, and (y/n) no longer knew at all whether she should laugh or be concerned. The combination of both seemed the only honest response, and it wasn't comfortable.
- No, she had replied.
- You're not even thinking about it.
- I don't need to.
- What a shame. The restaurant is really very good, apparently.
He had said that with a naturalness so disarming, so devoid of any attempt at effect, that (y/n) had felt something come loose in her usual logic. He's charming saying that. And that was precisely what was unsettling. You weren't supposed to be charming while proposing to die together. You were supposed to be dark, desperate, alarming. Not... like this. Not with that smile and that story about a seasonal menu.
A laugh had escaped her despite herself, brief, slightly incredulous.
- Do you often make this kind of request to strangers?
- As often as possible. And I consistently meet with refusal, which is rather vexing when you think about how much time I spend finding good restaurants.
- I'm surprised you keep trying, in that case.
- Perseverance. It's the key to everything. One day, someone will say yes, and that day I'll finally have a valid reservation for two people.
What am I doing here?
- You seem less shocked than most people, he observed, shifting subjects with the same disconcerting ease.
Less shocked on the outside, she had thought. But she had replied:
- I've been in Yokohama for three weeks. I'm adapting.
- A wise answer. The city must be earned. Most newcomers leave within the first month. Usually after crossing paths with someone like me, as it happens. I serve as a natural resistance test.
- You seem proud of it.
- I consider it a service rendered to the community.
A slight hesitation there, so brief she could have imagined it. But she hadn't asked about it.
- Dazai Osamu, he had said, inclining his head slightly.
- (L/n) (y/n).
- It's a pleasure, (l/n)-san. Sincerely, despite the refusal and the consequent cancellation of the reservation.
(Y/n) had looked at the calm water of the canal, then at the man beside her. His wet clothes, his bandages, his perpetually light expression. She had done a reasonable thing: she had chosen not to pull the thread.
- Do you work in the area? she had asked.
- Detective agency. A few streets from here. Fascinating, stimulating, and dangerous enough to fuel my hopes. But unfortunately my colleagues have an irritating tendency to save my life at the wrong moment. It's almost frustrating.
- Like people who watch strangers drowning badly?
- You learn quickly! That's exactly the kind of profile we're interested in.
The sun had begun its descent, tinting the water with copper reflections. (Y/n) had realized she had completely forgotten her bento.
Dazai was watching her with an attention he took care to make invisible: those quick sideways assessments, as if he were reading something in her gestures she hadn't told him. It was slightly uncomfortable. It was also, inexplicably, slightly pleasant.
- You're used to being alone, he had said suddenly.
(Y/n) had looked up.
- Excuse me?
- The way you settle into a space. You always leave room around you, even when there's no one there. As if you were used to relying only on yourself to fill the silence.
She hadn't responded right away. Not because he was wrong. Because he was too right, and it was coming from a man she had known for barely twenty minutes, and that combination was particularly destabilizing.
- ...Or else, he had added almost immediately, in the same perfectly even tone, you simply have a fear of pigeons. Some people have very specific traumas. I don't judge.
(Y/n) had blinked.
- You... just said something accurate and immediately sabotaged it?
- Survival instinct. Moments that are too sincere give me hives.
She had sketched a smile despite herself. It was clever, that way of defusing in one sentence what had just become a little too true. And irritating, because it worked.
- Do you do that with everyone?
- Do what, the hives?
- Read people. Then pretend you haven't done it.
- Only with those who are worth really looking at.
Something had vibrated in his pocket. Dazai had taken out a phone, glanced at it, and for the first time since she had met him, his expression had changed. Not dramatically, just a slight smile that resembled amused resignation.
- My partner, he had said with the sigh of someone who sees their fate arriving and finds it disappointingly banal. He has developed a sixth sense for interrupting me at the worst moment. It's his only real talent, and he cultivates it with admirable devotion.
- Or he's just doing his job.
- (L/n)-san, please. Don't defend him, you don't know him yet. That will come, and on that day you'll regret that sentence.
He had stood up, shaking his dripping coat one last time with the resignation of a man who knows his coat will never quite be the same again.
He had taken a few steps, then stopped. Not quite turned around, just enough for his voice to carry.
- If you're still finding your footing in the city, (l/n)-san... the Agency is on Yomiuri Street. The third building after the blue bookshop. We sometimes need curious people. And people capable of watching a stranger in a canal without immediately calling for help. It's rarer than you'd think.
- And if I'm not interested in a detective agency?
- Then come back just to refuse my next shinjū proposal. I'll surely have found a better restaurant by then and a better approach.
- I wouldn't miss it.
- I know.
And he had left.
She had watched him go up the steps, beige coat dripping, tall and slightly loose-limbed silhouette disappearing into the perpetual movement of Yokohama as if the city had always contained him and was simply taking him back. He hadn't turned around a second time.
The crow on the opposite ledge had let out a brief cry, as if to conclude.
(Y/n) had lowered her eyes to her cold bento.
She had thought about Yomiuri Street. The third building after the blue bookshop. She had thought about a notebook with columns, an unplugged hairdryer, eyes that read people and pretended not to have done so. And about that way he had of saying something true and immediately burying it under a joke, as if the truth were something you could only leave out in the open very briefly, and only by accident.
She had eaten her lunch looking at the water.
She hadn't found an answer. But the question hadn't left her.
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Ryūnosuke
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The patient needed fourteen stitches, an antibiotic, and a little common sense.
(Y/n) could handle the first two.
- Stay still, she said for the third time that evening, because the man on the upturned crate kept fidgeting despite the thread passing through his skin. You move again and I'll miss my stitch, and a missed stitch on a wound like this means an infection in ten days. Do you want an infection?
- No.
- Then stay still.
He stayed still.
(Y/n) stitched in silence, concentrated. The bare bulb above her swung slightly under an invisible draft, casting dancing shadows on the warehouse walls. It smelled of fuel oil, damp, and vaguely something metallic that (y/n) had long since learned not to identify too precisely.
The Yokohama port warehouses all looked alike at night. High sheet metal ceilings, cracked concrete floor, crates stacked in dark corners that could contain anything. (Y/n) had stopped wondering what they contained after her third month in the network. It wasn't her job. Her job was people. Their flesh, their bones, what others did to them.
She tied the last knot, cut cleanly, and examined her work with a critical eye.
Clean. Regular. She was satisfied.
- There.
She placed her instruments in the sterile basin and turned to face the patient.
- Fourteen stitches. You don't touch this, you don't get this wet, you don't sleep on this side. In a week, you come back or you call someone from the network to remove the threads.
She paused.
- And next time a knife comes near you, you take a step back.
- It was a switchblade, he muttered, as if that changed anything.
- That interests me less than your future scar.
(Y/n) was beginning to pack up her equipment in the large black bag. Precise, methodical movements: the thread, the scissors, used compresses in the red bag, the rest in its usual place. She knew this bag better than her own kitchen.
- The painkillers I left you are for tonight and tomorrow morning. No more. And if the wound reddens more than a centimeter around the stitches, you call me before it gets infected, not after.
- Understood.
- Good.
She was about to close the bag when the warehouse door opened.
(Y/n) didn't flinch. She had learned not to flinch, it was a matter of credibility in her profession. But her hands stilled for half a second on the bag flap before resuming their movement.
A man.
Tall, slim silhouette in a long black coat. Dark, short hair whose tips—(y/n) noted this without understanding why she was noting it—faded to white at two strands. He entered without noise, without hesitation, with the particular way certain people have of occupying a space: not by filling it, but by contracting it around them.
His gaze swept the warehouse.
Not nervously. Not hastily. With that deliberate slowness that meant he was taking the time to record everything because nothing he might find here worried him.
He stopped on the patient. Then on (y/n).
A silence.
- Who is this.
No question mark in the voice. Just a request for information, directed at the patient, as if (y/n) were not in a position to answer the question herself.
She watched the man she called Kenji—she called him Kenji, she didn't know if it was his real name and didn't care—change color within a second. The way his shoulders rose toward his ears, the way his hands disappeared between his knees. The body language of someone who had just recognized something very dangerous and was trying to make themselves forgotten.
Bad sign.
- The doctor, Kenji said, voice too high, too fast. She... she was already here when I arrived.
- That's false, the man replied.
Same tone as before. Neutral. Factual. As if lying were simply a calculation error.
(Y/n) closed her bag.
- I sutured him, she said, and her own voice seemed to her surprisingly steady. He had an open wound on his left flank, seven centimeters, clean edge, probably a fine blade. Fourteen stitches. I'm leaving in two minutes.
The man looked at her.
Really looked at her, this time. (Y/n) didn't like that. There was something in that gaze—pale grey, almost colorless in the poor light of the bulb—that didn't resemble the way people usually looked. He wasn't looking at her the way you look at someone. He was looking at her the way you assess something, coldly, methodically, to decide what to do with it.
- Who do you work for, he said.
(Y/n) took a mental second.
She knew this question. She had thought about it, abstractly, dozens of times since she had joined the network. If someone corners you and asks who you work for, what do you do? The answer she had been taught was simple: you don't know, you're freelance, you were contacted through an intermediary, you've never met anyone in person. Half-truths stacked to form something that resembled a real answer.
- I'm independent, she said. I receive calls, I come, I treat.
She raised her hands slightly, palms open, the universal gesture of "I have nothing to hide."
- That's all.
- False.
The word fell like before, flat, definitive, and (y/n) understood he wasn't saying it to intimidate her. He was saying it because it was true, and lies didn't interest him.
- There is an underground medical network that has been operating in this port for several months, he continued. This port belongs to the Port Mafia. Any unauthorized activity on this territory concerns us. You're going to give me the name of the person who runs this network, and the address where they operate.
The silence that followed lasted the time it took (y/n) to understand exactly what she had found herself in.
The Port Mafia.
She had heard that name, of course. You didn't live in Yokohama without hearing it, and you didn't work in the underground medical scene of Yokohama without understanding fairly quickly the geography of the powers in place. The Port Mafia controlled the port, a good portion of the city's traffic, and a considerable number of people who subsequently ended up on her treatment table at indecent hours.
That meant the man in front of her had every reason to do exactly what he was implicitly threatening to do.
(Y/n) felt something cold settle in her stomach.
But she also thought—and this was where that character flaw her colleagues called stubbornness and she preferred to call consistency resided—about the contact list in her phone. Six names. Six people doing the same work as her in different warehouses and back rooms of Yokohama, treating people nobody else would treat, who trusted her never to sell them out.
She wouldn't sell them out.
- I can't give you that.
The man didn't react immediately. He looked at her again. That inventory-gaze that was seriously beginning to grate on her nerves, and something in the air of the warehouse changed texture. Or perhaps it was his coat that moved, imperceptibly, in a way that had nothing to do with a draft.
- You can't, he said slowly, or you won't.
- Both.
(Y/n) held her gaze on him. It was difficult. She didn't look away anyway.
- I don't know the name of the person coordinating the network. I receive calls from intermediaries, addresses, schedules. Nobody gives me more information than what I need. And even if I knew it, I wouldn't give it to you.
A beat.
- You just said two contradictory things.
- I'm capable of doing both at the same time.
That was when his coat really moved.
(Y/n) had been looking him straight in the eyes when it happened, so she had missed the beginning of the movement. She just saw it suddenly, in her peripheral vision: something black and dense that deployed from the fabric of the coat like a shadow that was gaining volume, that was descending toward the floor, that was alive. She detached her eyes for a fraction of a second to look, and immediately regretted it because that was exactly the reaction to avoid.
A Ability.
She knew, abstractly, that Ability users existed. She treated some of them. Their wounds were no different from anyone else's, in the end. But seeing an Ability activate in front of her, in this confined space, with this man looking at her as if calculating how long it would take him to eliminate her—
She regained control of her breathing in a rather inelegant fashion.
- This is Rashōmon, the man said. It can sever anything.
Informative. Detached. As if he were explaining the characteristics of a tool.
- Thank you for the clarification, (y/n) said.
Her voice was drier than she had intended. An automatic defense, no doubt. Irony as a bumper when fear began to overflow.
The man stared at her.
There was something in his gaze that changed briefly. Not interest, not surprise. Rather the slight recalibration of someone who was expecting a specific reaction and wasn't getting the corresponding data. A fraction of a second, no more. Then blankness reclaimed its place.
- That changes nothing, he said.
- I know.
Another silence.
The black shadow still trembled on the floor, and (y/n) was making considerable effort not to look at it. She kept her eyes on the man. On his face specifically, because that was where she would read what was going to happen, even if that face wasn't giving her much to read. He was absolutely calm, of an almost unsettling blankness. Neither angry, nor impatient, nor cruel in the sense that cruelty implies pleasure.
He was simply calculating.
(Y/n) waited.
In the corner, Kenji had ceased to exist. He had turned himself into a piece of furniture, which was probably the most intelligent strategy available to him tonight.
- You're useless, the man finally said.
The word fell without particular violence. A pure observation.
- Probably, (y/n) admitted.
He didn't respond. His gaze shifted toward Kenji—brief, heavy with implications—then came back to her with something slightly different in it. Not consideration. More the kind of cold calculation you make when weighing the cost of a decision against its usefulness.
An underground medical network in Yokohama treated people who hospitals couldn't receive. People like members of the Port Mafia, among others. Eliminating the doctor tonight wasn't going to make the network disappear, and Mori wouldn't appreciate having an operational resource removed without authorization.
(Y/n) knew nothing of this reasoning. She just saw the black shadow slowly retract into the coat fabric, and the man look away.
Not from her. Just... from the situation. As if she had ceased to exist.
- You can go.
Three words, thrown over his shoulder.
(Y/n) grabbed her bag.
She crossed the warehouse at a steady pace. Not too fast, not too slow, the rhythm of someone leaving because she had been told to leave and not because she was fleeing, even if the distinction seemed increasingly abstract as she approached the door. She felt the man's gaze on her back for the entire journey. Or perhaps she didn't feel it and was imagining it, which amounted to the same thing.
She pushed the door open.
The port air hit her. Cold, salty, laden with iodine and diesel, extraordinarily banal. She continued walking until the corner of the warehouse, then to the next, then further until a building interposed itself between her and the door she had come through.
There, she stopped.
She pressed her back against the cold sheet metal of the wall and let out a long, slow, silent exhalation. Her legs were properly steady. That was good news. Her hands, however, were trembling quite frankly, and she watched them do so for a few seconds with the professional detachment of someone observing a symptom.
Delayed stress response. Normal.
She slid them into her pockets and resumed her route.
She still had two addresses that evening, and people didn't get injured any less because she had looked Rashōmon in the eyes.
***
It was three days later that she heard his name for the first time.
Two men in the waiting room of a pharmacy, low voices, rounded shoulders. (Y/n) was waiting for her turn at the counter with a list of medical supplies to restock and wasn't particularly listening to their conversation until a word surfaced.
She didn't catch the context. Just the name, spoken with that particular tone people reserve for things they'd rather not say too loudly.
Akutagawa.
(Y/n) stared at the bandage display in front of her.
She made the connection immediately. The description circulating like a watermark in the conversation of the two men matched the silhouette in the warehouse feature for feature. The black coat, the thinness, the eyes. Don't cross paths with Akutagawa. If you cross paths with Akutagawa, you don't argue. If you cross paths with Akutagawa, you run.
She had argued.
She had said "thank you for the clarification" to Rashōmon.
(Y/n) took a discreet breath, retrieved her waiting number, and sat down waiting for her turn thinking, very reasonably, that she had been very lucky and that this luck probably wouldn't repeat itself.
And that it would perhaps be wise, in the future, to start by fleeing and think afterward.
She already knew she wouldn't do any such thing.
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Author's Note — First Meeting (Part 2) 📖
Two more meetings, and two characters who demanded very different efforts from me.
Dazai gave me trouble, I'll admit it. He's difficult to pin down precisely because he operates in layers. Lightness on the surface, something much heavier underneath, and between the two that particular talent he has for sabotaging his own moments of sincerity before anyone can turn them against him. I hope I've done justice to that mechanism, and to that way he has of being charming in an almost unfair way while never really being where you think he is.
Akutagawa, paradoxically, felt more accessible to write. But I may be wrong in my interpretation of him, and that's where I'd love your input. What mattered to me is that his decision to let (y/n) go isn't clemency. It's a calculation. A cold, pragmatic calculation that has nothing to do with her as a person. And perhaps you understood exactly why without my needing to explain it, which would be the best possible response.
I hope I've respected both of them. Tell me if I've strayed. 💕
More soon. ✨
