There is a very brief moment at the beginning of the Fifteen light novel that gets completely overlooked but I think ultimately encapsulates the entirety of Chuuya and Dazai's relationship dynamic.
“I’m gonna give ya a choice, kid,” the boy told him, hands still in his pockets. “Die now or die after givin’ me the information I want. What’s it gonna be?”
“I like those two choices. Both very tempting offers,” Dazai replied unflinchingly, despite having been hit in the torso and knocked through several buildings. “Okay. Kill me now.”
The boy in the biker jacket fell silent for a brief moment, then looked down at Dazai as if realizing he’d finally met a person of character.
That last line truly is the crux of the Soukoku partnership. They have such a pull towards one another because, prior to this, they had never truly interacted with someone that could be considered their equal.
Dazai is bored. Everyone knows this. He whines about it to anyone that will listen.
“Give that back! I wanna die!” Dazai flailed his arms. “Life is so boring; I’d rather just die! But I want it to be quick and painless! Help me out, Mori!”
But something that gets overlooked is the fact that Chuuya is bored too.
Perhaps it's harder to notice because of how reactionary Chuuya normally is but his baseline emotional state tends to be rather dull. Especially throughout Fifteen and Stormbringer. Like Dazai, Chuuya is struggling deeply with a detachment to the world around him. Dazai has no reason to live and Chuuya has no clue what or who he is. It causes almost this haze around his mind that leaves him untethered from everyone else.
And yet Chuuya had no interest in money or power. They brought him no happiness because he was missing something far more important: a past.
Chuuya gains nothing from his power as he finds it isolating. Nobody is ever on his level which just adds to his level of detachment.
“Hey. You wanna know why I always fight without using my hands?” Chuuya asked as he approached Randou. Numerous pebbles vibrated by his feet and floated with each step. “I’ve never lost a fight in my life. I’ve never even been in real danger… But that’s no surprise. After all, I’m not even human. My identity is a safeguard, like you said. Nothing more than a little pattern etched on a colossal furnace of power. Hey… Do you know how that feels?”
Chuuya stepped onto empty space, using the floating debris to walk in midair. He took another step forward with his other leg. And just like that, Chuuya slowly approached Randou as if he were ascending a staircase.
“That’s why I kept my hands in my pockets. I figured I’d one day feel like I was about to lose, no longer enjoying the fight but just doing everything I could to protect myself… I thought maybe that way I’d start to like myself as a person—me, a little pattern without a body of my own.”
Like Dazai, this same detachment leads to Chuuya considering suicide. It's also why when Chuuya is at his mental worst and these suicidal thoughts start to emerge, they do so by stealing Dazai's voice and image.
Obviously, I’m gonna never gonna give in. I can keep this up forever. But for what purpose?
“I told you, Chuuya.”
He looked up in the direction of the sudden voice. It was a familiar voice, one that belonged to the person he hated most in this world.
“Your birth itself was a mistake. We’re the same. Is there really a point to suffering through all that pain for a life that isn’t even real?”
The voice was taunting him.
“Shut up,” Chuuya spat, but even he knew he was talking to himself. He was most likely hearing things due to the drugs he was given. There was nobody there, but his mind was scattered, and the voice wouldn’t stop.
“Screw you, Dazai.”
“That’s the best comeback you could come up with?”
Chuuya wanted nothing more than to slice off the ear the voice was whispering into. He could see Dazai’s wavering shadow by his side, and he wanted to gouge out his eyes.
“That’s just proof that you at least somewhat believe what I’m saying. Because deep down inside, you’re the same as me.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up! I’m me! I’m not some piece of shit like you!”
Chuuya hates the fact he can understand Dazai. He views it as a reflection of his worst parts. His worst fear is becoming so detached that he ends up on the level of Dazai, someone who is apathetic towards almost everything.
Dazai, on the other hand, views Chuuya as human BECAUSE of this.
“You sound like you’re certain he’s human.”
“I am.” Dazai sighed, smiling. “There’s no way I could hate a man-made character string this much.”
Dazai gets enjoyment out of his dislike towards Chuuya as Dazai tends not to feel much intense emotion about ANYTHING. Even in the earlier chapters of Fifteen, it's shown that Dazai is bored and exasperated by Mori. Chuuya is the first truly interesting "thing" he'd been exposed to in who-knows-how-long. At the end of Fifteen, there is a conversation where Dazai explains he wants to live. I know that it's well beloved by the SKK fandom but I want to dissect the parts that are overlooked a bit more.
“Get away from me,” Chuuya spat. “You’re not gonna convince me to do anything.”
“I know.” Dazai glanced at Randou. Then he whispered quietly so that Randou couldn’t hear: “Let’s beat him. Together.”
Chuuya stared at Dazai in bewilderment, seemingly uncomprehending.
“…Are you being serious?”
“I have a plan, but I can’t do it alone. It needs both of us to work. Do you trust me?”
Chuuya held Dazai’s gaze for a brief moment and demanded, “Tell me what made you change your mind. I thought you wanted to die.”
“I just felt like it. Is that not a good enough reason?” Dazai smiled, perplexed.
Dazai is perplexed by Chuuya's demand for an explanation. Dazai, up until this point, has been reconstructing his view of Chuuya. He isn't used to be questioned about his intentions as he often has very surface-level ones (because he wants to or because it's directed at some goal).
Most people would simply accept Dazai's answer of "feeling like it" as trying to unravel Dazai's thoughts and feelings seems like an impossible thing. Chuuya doesn't deny TRUSTING Dazai nor think he's lying - he's "bewildered" by the statement. Instead of backing down though, Chuuya wants to know WHY. More importantly though, Chuuya believes that Dazai's explanation will be enough for him to UNDERSTAND where Dazai is coming from.
“Working for the Mafia has piqued my interest, albeit slightly,” Dazai
began. “In the outside world—the world of light—death is kept separate
from everyday life. It’s swept under the rug. People find it unpleasant. But the Mafia’s world isn’t like that. Death is an extension of everyday life. It’s a part of life. And I tend to think that’s more accurate. Death isn’t the opposite of life but merely a function of it. We breathe, eat, fall in love, and die. And you can’t get the full picture of living without observing death up close.”
Chuuya quietly stared at Dazai’s expression as if he were searching for
something human deep inside of him. “So you’re saying…you want to live now?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Dazai replied with a resigned smile. “Maybe I
won’t find anything, but I figure I’ll give it a try. Once I successfully
complete this mission, I’m going to join the Mafia. Gotta defeat him first, though. Besides…”
“‘Besides’…?”
“I got a new dog—you. And I still haven’t given you any commands,”
Dazai said with a smirk. Chuuya snorted.
Chuuya, in this moment, still doesn't fully understand. He's trying to though. This is going to seem like a super random segue (just stay with me as I promise it's not) but also in the beginning of Fifteen is this description of Dazai. It's from Mori's perspective.
Dazai’s expression was unchanging, which made reading his thoughts nigh impossible. His face was as still as the frozen surface of a lake.
Why do I bring this up? Because Chuuya gets a similar moment about reading Dazai's face at the END of Fifteen. You would think that based on how Dazai's face/expressions/mannerisms are usually described in more serious moments, that Chuuya would get frustrated because he can't read Dazai or would once again be confused by Dazai's. The term "expressionless", "bored", "empty" are all the main synonyms used to get across how apathetic Dazai tends to be seen as. In this case however...
Chuuya glared at him, still breathing heavily. Despite his trembling legs and the sweat pouring down his face, he didn’t take his eyes off Dazai for a second. He quietly stared at Dazai as if all the answers were written on his face.
Chuuya has only known Dazai for a few days at this point. Yes, they had defeated Rimbaud together, but Dazai is his enemy in this moment - he's actively threatening the Sheep. Still, Chuuya is confident in his ability to read Dazai.
The defeat of Rimbaud shifted something in their dynamic. Whatever happened in that fight created a connection between the two of them that led to an understanding on Chuuya's end that nobody else (excluding possibly Oda) has of Dazai.
This might get me a lot of flack but I don't think Dazai comes to that same understanding of Chuuya until the end of Stormbringer.
Yes, Dazai cares for Chuuya and is confident in his humanity but I don't think he GRASPS who Chuuya is as a person until their fight with Verlaine.
Dazai is downright GIDDY when Guivre appears. It's the most interesting thing he's ever seen. It offers him both a new experience AND an opportunity for death...
Dazai looked up at the creature.
“This is a singularity? Did this power really come from a skill?” He
sounded downright ecstatic. “It looks like the end of the world.”
Even his lips unconsciously curled with euphoria.
But when Dazai's about to give up, he chooses otherwise because of Chuuya. I won't cite the infamous "ANYTHING BUT THAT" scene with Mori as everyone is already well aware of it but instead a later moment...
“What do you want to do, then? Grow big, too, and have a fistfight with
it?” Dazai’s icy gaze met Chuuya’s. “It’s hopeless. Isn’t it obvious just
looking at that thing? A singularity’s like a loophole in the rules. That
monster is a manifestation of something that shouldn’t exist in this world. Humans don’t stand a chance against it. There’s nothing we can do.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Chuuya said, sternly holding Dazai’s gaze
for several seconds. He then let go of Dazai and stated firmly: “There is something we can do about it. I’m sure of it.”
Dazai listlessly dropped to the ground in a seated position. “Ha-ha-ha.
This is getting interesting. And what are you basing that on?”
Dazai is surprised by Chuuya once again and is willing to shift gears because of it. He's actually relatively "comforting" of Chuuya in this scene and shows concern for him up until Chuuya activates corruption. When Chuuya DOES, it's when we get this line...
“Incredible,” a dumbfounded Dazai muttered as he watched from the top of the gas tank. “So this is the power of Arahabaki.”
Dazai does the one thing Chuuya needs him not to do - consider him as a separate being to his own power. But then...
“So that’s Arahabaki’s—that’s Chuuya’s true form,” Dazai muttered feverishly as he stared up from the surface.
He ends up correcting himself after a few more moments.
Dazai really only got it in that moment, I think. Ironic considering this is the same scene that discusses the loneliness of Verlaine and Chuuya. It shifts the narrative of Chuuya being completely detached to having formed relationships and friendships. It calls out Verlaine for having wanted the same things. It also reinforces the fact that Chuuya STILL does have a connection with someone that he can rely on.
This second sun that lit up the sky eventually vanished, quietly and delicately. After limply floating in the air for a few seconds, the wings on Chuuya’s back vanished, and he slowly began to fall.
Until Dazai caught him.
There is something, I think, about knowing and loving someone you don't like. Soukoku works as a partnership because they understand one another so well that they never lose interest. It's just so interesting to pick apart and see how deep that dynamic actually goes.
Sorry for the rambling lol. If anyone actually made it to this point, congrats! You win nothing but my respect.
Way back at the launch of HSR 3.0 (I can't believe it's been almost a year?!), I started posting about Phaidei, combing for tiny crumbs with the assumption that a little *wink wink nudge nudge* fanservice might be the best we could expect from Amphoreus's dedicated "regional yaoi." After the feast that was 3.1, I spent a lot of time wondering whether we were seeing queer bait of the highest caliber, whether Hoyo actually had any intention of making Phainon and Mydei's relationship relevant to their story and character arcs or if they were just being pushed massively for that quick yaoi fan cash grab.
But by the time Phainon's 3.4 trailer rolled around, I wrote:
And look at where we are now.
The fact that they got the library's name wrong again is sending me.
In their post-quest cutscene, Phainon and Mydei reunite in a hilariously awkward initial showing ("Yo!" "Sup?" I'm cryingggg from laughing), and then we're treated to these devastating lines: Phainon acknowledges that his quest for vengeance and then subsequent desperation to become the hero that Amphoreus required left him entirely void of any sense of self, unable to articulate his own desires separate from what everyone else needed him to be.
Mydei tells us players that he thought Phainon's dream would be to return to Aedes Elysiae.
But Phainon says no.
Phainon says that that wish was fueled by his frantic attempt to run from the reality and pressure he faced, and that his true desire--his first desire all of his own since his childhood--is to be with Mydei. (Like, look at the wording there; it's not even "I want to go to the library," it's "Can you take me there?" Hello???)
Man, let's just take a second for that to sink in.
Phainon's marketing, Phainon's role in the story, Phainon's entire character arc dragged us kicking and crying to the conclusion that Phainon had entirely lost his sense of identity, that he wholly severed himself from his own emotions, that he couldn't even formulate his own wishes, let alone articulate them--
And then the writers deliberately linked Phainon's healing to his relationship with Mydei. Phainon's budding attempts to reclaim his identity and define himself as a person with individual desires is now inextricably tied to his wish to remain near to Mydeimos--to the promise they made to each other.
It's just crazy. As one of the two main push characters of Amphoreus, a massively anticipated expy of one of the most well-known Honkai Impact 3rd characters, Phainon was given a character arc that sees its "Hero's Journey" end when he is able to return to the side of another man and tell that man ("formally," even) that the very first wish of his new life is to spend time together in a cherished place.
Phainon's relationship with Mydei (hell, even if you don't define it as a ship!) isn't just for decoration. It isn't just for fanservice. It's central to Phainon's character development arc, central to his sense of closure and personal growth, and central to his first step in healing from the trauma he went through over 33 million cycles of suffering.
This isn't even close to queer bait anymore--like heterosexual romances have been the backbone of young characters' coming-of-age/self-identity-quest stories for ages, this is a queer romance being directly woven into the narrative's resolution and to the story's most apparent theme: No matter how hard the struggle, life is worth fighting for, because one day you will reach your happy ending.
Actually, while that is wild (for Hoyo) in and of itself, one of things I think is even more wild is how explicitly this cutscene is laid out to mirror a love confession or a confirmation of two characters' romantic feelings.
Phainon and Mydei stand alone beneath a dome full of stars. When the Trailblazer walks up, it's to discover that the pair are being painfully and uncharacteristically awkward with each other, clearly struggling to get out any of the words they actually want to say. Trailblazer is even given the option to point out the extreme strangeness of the atmosphere:
For a few lines, they try to banter with each other to take the emotional weight out of the moment, but in the end, both of them seem to know there's nothing to be gained by being roundabout anymore.
Mydei's words reveal that he was watching Phainon basically from the moment they returned, while Phainon's words imply the exact same thing in reverse. Despite reuniting with long-lost family, both of them were looking for an opportunity to speak to each other. More than this, Mydei effectively says "I thought you would only get around to greeting me later" and Phainon says "Of course not!"--because Mydei is not less important to him.
Then we get:
He might as well be saying "There's something I want to confess." This moment was explicitly and very intentionally designed to mirror the famous confession scenes of shoujo romances everywhere, where trembling girl holds out her confession letter or stuttering boy meets his crush behind the school and fumbles his way through "I like you. Like-like you." This line was supposed to make fangirls' hearts skip a beat, that's why it cuts off with the "...", so you're stuck for the two seconds it takes you click and load the next line, wondering if THIS IS THE MOMENT(?!) that the protagonist will confess his true feelings--of course he can't, it's a Hoyo game, but the devs deliberately invoked romance confession scenes in this cutscene to imply what cannot be said out loud.
Despite the deliberate invocation of a confession scene here, savvy players know the actual confession took place already, back at the end of 3.1, when Phainon gave Mydei a ring and Mydei effectively accepted, asking Phainon to meet him again in the library in their next lives, with the implication being that the new world of peace would allow them the chance to finally be together:
And even realer fans might realize the actual "promise" that Phainon is referencing may not be this moment but yet another moment they swore that fate would not be able to separate them and that they would reunite again:
(The word in other language translations is "promise".)
Thus, Phainon and Mydei's reunion scene is framed not just as a confession but also as a "renewal of vows."
We can actually see Phainon fishing, trying to find out whether the commitments he and Mydei made are still on the table after everything that's happened:
"Are you going to introduce me to your parents? Please say you're going to introduce me to your parents."
And Mydei, of course, being who he is, simply drops the most devastatingly romantic confirmation he possibly could:
Okay I know this line is supposed to be nonchalantly beautiful and all but I'm kind of dying; dude was so focused on making up a metaphor to imply his heart has and will always belong to Phainon that he forgot that doors without locks don't have keys. No thoughts, just declarations.
But Phainon is the king of rationalizing, metaphor is no good for him, so it gets to the point that the Trailblazer feels they have to interject, interrupting to literally clarify for Phainon that "The promise still stands":
Yes, Phainon, the wedding is back on.
To which Phainon reacts with enormous relief and excitement (three whole exclamation points, oh I know the boy was doing that dumbass fist pump in his head):
This is what he was there for. This is what he actually came into that conversation hoping to hear. Phainon wasn't sure whether any of the past he and Mydei had together had survived their 33 million battles to the death, whether Mydei was still committed to the promise they made so "long ago," and he came into the conversation with the intention of telling Mydei: "I'm figuring myself and my desires out, and the promise we made to each other is the thing I desire most. Even with all that's happened, do you still feel the same as you did in our past lives?"
And Mydei says yes, again, always.
It's about the library, but also no, it's not. The promise to visit the library has clearly and unmistakably, very intentionally on the writing team's part, become a metaphor for the deeper promise to simply "be together," to spend their new peaceful lives doing the things they weren't ever able to do together before.
The Trailblazer even hammers this home for the player by interjecting in the "confession" scene to tease Phainon for the fact that his dream was always to go to Castrum Kremnos, even from the time he was a silly, carefree kid:
Because the writers cannot say out loud "They want to be by each other's side" as part of the text of the story, given the game's circumstances, they instead code this message clearly into the story's subtext, letting symbolism do its work. The library isn't just a place--it's a symbol for both of their dreams and hopes for a future spent together.
(By the way, tiny aside, but I think that making this symbolic place a library of all things, in a plot that is commenting in a very meta way about storytelling itself, is just a fantastic choice: A "library" is a place full to the brim with stories--that is, it is a place full of both uncountable memories and myriad new beginnings, every tale in it a world onto its own, with its own happy ending, just waiting for people to come find it. In a story about storytelling, a library represents infinite possibility, and therefore also, finally, freedom--the freedom to embrace new ideas and new joys by finding the story you end up loving the most.)
A final thing I think is worth considering about Phainon and Mydei's reunion is that framing this as a "confirming where our relationship stands" scene doubles down even harder on the fact that Phainon's act of returning the signet ring to Mydei was meant to be seen in a romantic light, evocative of a wedding proposal. Throughout the course of Amphoreus's story, players get to see three rings shared between characters: Mydei's ring returned by Phainon, Trailblazer receiving a ring from Castorice, and (presumably) Trailblazer giving a ring to Cyrene.
In the latter two cases, the rings are undoubtedly meant to be read in a romantic light: Castorice can't embrace the Trailblazer (or at least thinks she can't), so the ring represents a symbolic form of being able to wrap around and touch someone directly. This ring was written by the devs as part of Castorice's (relatively mild) ship bait with the Trailblazer, and no players who have Castorice as their waifu would have remotely mistaken the fact that the devs wanted her gift to come across as something like a "promise ring" for the player.
And then of course there's Cyrene's ring, gifted by the Trailblazer (I'd assume), as part of the animation in which Cyrene reinforces her love for the world as a whole, but which absolutely and inherently evokes images of wedding proposals and engagement rings:
By insisting on romantic readings for both Castorice's and Cyrene's rings, the game strongly associates the very act of ring-giving with love, retroactively insisting even harder on a romantic reading of Phainon and Mydei's ring exchange as well.
With this connotation in the background, the fact that Mydei and Phainon's reunion centers specifically on answering the question "Is our promise still in effect?" basically makes it impossible to read the scene as anything other than "checking to see whether the engagement is still on"--then confirming that nothing in the world could ever have undone it.
What do you even say?
Oh wait, I know:
I'm not even going to say anything else about this; they really just said "If we get fined by the censors, we get fined by the censors."
So... yeah. That's... Yeah.
We all know that Hoyo will never be able to make a M/M ship canon--they've been sanctioned for W/W content before too and rules are even stricter for content depicting men--but this closure to Mydei and Phainon's story by doubling down on the answer "These two male characters want to be with each other across lifetimes" was so overt that I'm actually shocked that it made it past all the barriers to stay in the final release of patch 3.7.
This wasn't a small thing. This took major commitment from Hoyo, a major gamble on whether or not enough fans would buy hard into the Mydei/Phainon ship to make putting themselves out on the limb like this worthwhile, and I'm sure that some long and serious talks were had about whether making their most pushed male character ever read as queer to just about every player (who isn't in blatant denial) was really a "safe" business decision...
After the release of 3.1, I wrote:
From the very beginning, I felt that Hoyo was moving on Phaidei in ways beyond how they had pushed their M/M ships before, and to the end of Amphoreus we see that act borne out, going so far as to now label Mydei and Phainon "the perfect ship" in their own game text.
Genuinely, my hat is off to them for this part of Amphoreus's writing.
I'm sure there are still those who will deny Phaidei, who will always deny it, simply because the developers can't have the characters flat out confess to each other. (Some people simply won't accept what's presented to them unless the actual words "I love you" are said, like the incels abandoning Star Rail over the line "It's a date, Mydeimos" but managing to overlook the literal suggestive-of-sex scene in the baths lol.)
However, for the large number of fans who have been playing Amphoreus with an eye for Hoyo's own intentions, I think most people will now agree: Phaidei is about as canon as an M/M ship will ever be in a modern Hoyo game.
they won't tell you this in therapy but sometimes the best way to stop catastrophizing/anxiety is to interrupt your spiraling with "girl what the hell are you talking about"
i literally live 10 miles from shitterton and i can confirm that the council had to replace all of their signs with rocks because they kept getting stolen.
not drawin nothin today because its the day of the birth of me and so I get to do what I want which is absolutely nothing at all. And eat gummies. Life is good and all is well
