「 ✦ Cheri/Cher/Cherry ✦ 」 or whatever you prefer honestly idrc ⋆˙⟡ she/her ⋆ 21 ⋆ infp ࣪ ִֶָ☾. spinner of a thousand tales, eternal untangler of intrepid thoughts
˙⋆✮Requests
˗ˏˋStatus: Open (only headcanons)ˎˊ˗
Thank you everyone for sending in your requests! I will now be going through each of them thoroughly and with my utmost care 🙇♀️ please be patient with me ^^"
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⋆✴︎˚｡Masterlist
Oneshots
High school AU!Dazai,Chuuya ⌯⌲ He Started it!
High school AU! Pt 2 ⌯⌲ In Progress...
Highschool AU!Ranpo ⌯⌲ Open Book
Headcanons
Chuuya x PM!reader ⌯⌲ Ghost of You
Domestic!Chuuya x fem!Reader ⌯⌲ Homemaking 101
Chuuya longfic ⌯⌲ The Fox & The Owl
Ch 1 – A Lone Windchime
Ch 2 – The Arctic Harbinger
Ch 3 – Gremlin
Ch 4 – Loose Screw
Ch 5 – Cerulean
Ch 6 – Coming Soon...
You can also find it on AO3 and Wattpad!
Dividers by @/thanathecreator, @/angeliicide, and @/strangergraphics
Homemaking 101 | domestic!Chuuya x fem!Reader | Headcanons(?)
What happens when a flower bloomed in darkness suddenly finds himself in a patch of light?
Word count: 2.3k
To turn a house into a home: a guide for those whom violence stalks like a shadow.
"Hah? The hell you think you're giving this lame pamphlet to? You've got the wrong guy."
No I didn't. You'll want to hear this.
"...Tch."
Step 1: When you reach the front door, pause at the ornate doormat, admire the rose bushes beginning to bud outside, and ring the doorbell— the one with the bluebird's chime.
Chuuya squints at the engraved bird, silver in tongue and countenance, hung at eye-level on the front door as its tune echoes inside. A cheerful melody that loops on and on, one he'd typically hear the morning after midnight stakeouts, when the nights were too long yet the sun rises too early.
Now he waits on the front porch, a heel tapping against the wood. Strange, you're taking longer than usual to open the door. Maybe you'd gone on an errand.
He glances at his boots and that's when he notices the trail of mud he'd just dragged up the steps. It stretches all the way from the front gate in a thick track, dirtying the chalk drawings on the pavement.
His chest twists with a tinge of something he can't explain, as he takes this time to examine the grime between the soles of his boots. He frowns, and tries to rub them against the floor mat, but this only spreads mud around on the porch.
Sighing, he picks up the garden hose and rinses off the mess he made on the front yard. He'd have to apologize for ruining your drawings later.
Wait. Why is he even counting on you to let him in? He has a key of his own.
Fishing it out of his coat, he unlocks the birchwood door with a click.
Step 2: When the door swings open, take a deep breath and call out, "I'm home."
The doorknob squeezes beneath Chuuya's gloved hands, his breath hitched in his throat. When did that become the first thing he said stepping through his own house?
Of course he was home, where else would he be.
The smell of the oven wafts to his nose first. He didn't even know ovens had smells. But now he can tell when it's just been used, when the heat meets butter, flour, sugar, and when he's going to start worrying about his blood sugar again.
Then comes the scent of lemons— the dish soap. Bubbles float from the open kitchen and drift in front of him in a lazy pattern. If they were targets he'd be pissed trying to snipe them in such a motion.
His nose wrinkles. Something foul infiltrates the cozy aromas, something wretched like an oil spill in clear water.
He lifts the lapel of his coat to his chin.
Oh. It's him.
Every time he comes home, he drags with him the remnants of the battlefield: blood, smoke, diesel, gunpowder, rust, sewer water this time too.
He immediately shrugs off the coat and slips into the kitchen to toss it into the washing machine, where a mellow hum floats through the air.
Step 3: Take responsibility for keeping the house running— that's what it means to be part of a household.
Without a word, Chuuya slips off his gloves and steals a dish out of your hands. You meet his eyes with a pout.
"I was in the middle of scrubbing that!"
"Not anymore," Chuuya mutters under his breath, plucking the sponge out of your other hand. "You know the deal, you make dinner, I clean. You'll exhaust yourself if you keep going like this."
You plant your hands on your hips where your apron is tied and give him an incredulous look.
"You barely got home and you're already doing work again."
"This isn't work."
You click your tongue. You never used to do that before dating him. "I just took a nice long bubble bath. I'm the farthest thing from exhausted."
"That's why you didn't answer the door?"
"Oh, my bad." You scratch your cheek. "Guess I was enjoying myself a little too much."
"No such thing," he huffs as he rinses the mixing bowl.
"Why'd you ring the bell anyway? You have your own key," you say off-handedly as you pick up the gloves he left on the counter.
Chuuya doesn't have an answer. He simply eyes the way you handle his gloves with such unflinching ease. You don't even grimace when your bare hands touch the dirt and dried blood caked on the leather. You simply take them to the powder room, where he knows they'll be rinsed, conditioned then hung out to dry beside fuzzy blankets and sundresses.
The way you'd seen him do once, many spring cleanings ago. The way you've been doing since.
Step 4: This one's non-negotiable. When there's a fire going in the hearth, grab a warm drink and dessert, and toss all your thoughts to the fire.
Fire. Ash. Scorched wood and rising smoke.
Chuuya once wondered whether his fingers were flints. Everything that's ever passed through them combusted in a roaring flame.
A blazing inferno. A spectacle of a mess.
Like a ballet routine, the rhythm of fire was a beat that Chuuya knew all too well. The initial lick of the flame before the engulfment.
Buildings. Ports. Ships. Documents. Merchandise. The aftermath may differ but the burning is all the same.
At least, that's what he thought until he watched the same fire cook his meals more times than he could count. The same heat that baked the cookie resting in his lap.
No. It wasn't the fire. It was you.
Even now, the oven door stays open so the heat can escape. Cinnamon lingers in the air.
His fist curls and clenches on the arm rest of his leather chair. It was the only piece of furniture he brought from his old apartment into your shared house.
His old place was a formality of a home. A bed to sleep in between missions, where he doesn't even dream. You'd think it was plucked straight out of an office magazine. Complete with dark walls that swallowed every shadow and marble floors that chilled the blood through his skin. Immaculate shelves of books he'd only ever skim.
"That's not reading," you'd argued with him, a groan leaving your perfect lips. "What's the point of having a bunch of books you don't even enjoy? What a waste of shelf space."
"Came with the apartment," he'd grunted. "Took too much work to throw them all out."
"Well, now you can choose how to fill those shelves yourself," you said, beaming at him. And Chuuya, with all the strength he's always boasted about, felt that same strength leave his body entirely.
With anybody else that crossed paths with him in headquarters, his patience runs as thin as water, his mouth acting before his brain could catch up. With anybody unfortunate enough to encounter him in battle, he'd demolish them before they could even see who they were up against.
But with you, against your countless books opened face down on every foreseeable surface, he couldn't so much as lift a finger, couldn't find the will to even spill a word of complaint.
"It's the easiest way to bookmark them," you'd always explain.
Yet for all the contrarian that he was, that was the only justification Chuuya ever needed.
He pondered this over a sip of steaming coffee and a half-eaten snickerdoodle. In his office, in his bedroom, he'd go for wine and crackers without a second thought.
But one summer day not unlike the rest, a breeze fluttering the linen curtains, you'd been rambling about something funny your coworker said. His fingers gravitated toward the bottleneck out of habit but stopped short. Your face, lit with dappled sunlight through the window, was animated with every word of your story.
All he thought was:
'I wanna make sure I remember this tomorrow.'
Now, in the living room (what a strange name, isn't that every room one lives in?), coffee and cookies it is.
Step 5: Appreciate the home decor.
The lighter clicks before he can stop himself, cigarette hanging from his lips mere inches from the tiny flame.
But his eyes flicker to the pot of orchids sitting on the coffee table in front of him. White and purple petals alternate like gemstones glistening in the afternoon sun.
A violet so striking it was no wonder the color was once likened to royalty. And the white... so luminous in the limning light. Seeing the ash tray anywhere near it somehow felt like vandalism.
Must be a new pot. You never did stop finding excuses to keep decorating the house.
With a sigh, Chuuya pulled himself out of the armchair, hooked the ash tray under a finger, and slipped past the backdoor into the yard.
He'd only taken one drag by the time a creak sounded behind him.
"Here all by yourself, handsome?" A giggle rises like champagne bubbles beside him. Before he could respond, you siddled up beside him and plucked the cigarette from his mouth into yours, smiling like you're oh so proud of your favourite trick.
He pulls another one out of the pack without missing a beat. He'd long since given up fighting the smile that fits onto his face, small as it is.
"Next time tell me when you want flowers. You don't gotta go buying em yourself."
A cloud of smoke puffs in front of you. "But I didn't buy them for myself. I don't mind spending my money on them because they're ours."
Chuuya exhales, a ribbon of smoke twisting into the air.
"Tch. Always got excuses for everything."
You smile anyway, seeing right through his thinly veiled irritation. "They're nice though, aren't they?"
"You're lucky you've got good taste."
Soon enough, your two trails of smoke curl together until he can't tell where his ends and yours start.
Step 6: Last but certainly not least. When somebody does something for you, you let them know you appreciate it.
"Thank you" weren't usually words Chuuya had a hard time passing. To his subordinates turning in their reports, to Kouyou for lending him another one of her hangover cures, to his ever- reliable gloves supplier.
But within the four walls of this house, the two words feel infinitely small.
It slips out anyway, when you surprised him with the wine cellar in the basement, when he saw his own dedicated hat and coat rack in the closet, when you arranged his vinyl records along the walls of the foyer.
Every time, he'd mumble the words under his breath, making you chuckle every time. But he couldn't stop the sweat that prickles the back of his throat or the way his palms would itch with the desire to give something bigger back in return.
After all, how does he thank someone for making space for him... for the discord that follows his every footstep, for the inevitable destruction that awaits and every scrap of chaos in between?
So Chuuya does what Chuuya knows best.
He remembers. He remembers your preferred brand of sugar, the farmers' market where you buy eggs from chickens whose names you know, your seasonal scented candles, your bath soaps, clay masks and face powder, your favourite authors.
Most of all, he remembers how the silence he once relished in solitude now feels wrong in place of your music. Your soft turning pages, your low hums, your bluebird doorbell, your bare feet padding in the backyard.
Until remembering almost makes him forget about his past long enough to forget why he needed to in the first place.
One night, you lay beside him on the couch in his home office, head completely entrusted to his shoulder. His fingers twisted the ends of your hair long after you'd fallen asleep, a mission report in the other hand. Every now and then you'd shudder and furrow your brows in a place unreachable to him, and all he can do is stroke your forehead until the creases smooth out.
One arm still hugged an open book to your chest, though it slid down a little after your last shuffle. Methodically, he set aside his report and picked up the book before the floor could claim it. He threw a glance around the room until his eyes landed on a dried leaf sitting on the side table.
That'll have to do. If he ever dog-eared any of your books you'd never let him hear the end of it.
You mutter something in your sleep, your now free hand searching the fabric of the couch for something to grasp. Chuuya sighs the sigh of a man who is exactly where he wants to be. It terrifies him.
But not enough to refuse you the warmth of his fingers intertwined with yours.
...
And that, dear readers, is how a house becomes a home.
"Wait, wait, hold up. Aren't ya forgetting something?"
I don't believe I am?
"Guess I gotta do it myself then."
Bonus step: Never forget that home is just a fancy name for the greatest thing you can lose.
A rose by any other name still bears petals bound to wilt. Such is the tragedy of life.
Chuuya knows this better than most others. That a man who is exactly where he wants to be knows exactly what he stands to lose.
And yet...
One look at your sleeping face, one brush against the hands that built a home out of this house, and he feels like he's ready to lay it all on the line again.
That doesn't quiet the unease that lodges in his chest like a bullet every time he thinks about it though. Every time he remembers another object you bring through the door is another thing that will one day be left behind.
If anything, it makes him want to protect it all the more fiercely.
So what happens when a flower bloomed in darkness finds himself in a patch of light?
It simply means he'll fight tooth and nail to bask in the warmth for longer. Even if it means fighting to keep himself from withering.
Ahem ahem, so what I wanted to request is, femreader and chuuya were friends with benefits (both of them were secretly inlove) back in sheep. However they got separated due to him joining port mafia.
And after 7 years of being apart Chuuya and femreader came across at an old bookshop. Femreader was an employee there—
The rest is up to you to complete. I would also kind of prefer slowburn (considering they have been separated for a while) but its again up to you!
I hope I didn’t cross any guidelines if I do feel free to skip this!
(Love your fanfics btw <3)
-🫐
Answer + Updates
Hello lovely anon~
First, uhm, thank you for giving me gold. When I read your prompt, a dozen ideas flooded in all at once and just thinking about the outline I've come up with already makes my heart ache. So yes, I do plan to write this as a slowburn and it may have an unhealthy dosage of angst 🫣
Actually I came across this post and thought it'd be perfect for this hehe
Safe to say, I have a feeling this is gonna be a long one. And I want to make sure I deliver on this concept to its fullest potential so I do have to give you guys some updates on where I'll be these next few weeks:
Updates
The Chuuya high school au is in the works and I apologize for how long it's taking. I underestimated how much I wanted to say in his route and it's causing a couple of detours 😅 I will try my best to get it out as soon as I'm happy with it
If you've sent me a oneshot request, thank you for sending in your ideas. I'm going to look through each one thoroughly and try to give you my best rendition on your wonderful ideas. So they're going to take a bit of time to get to. I'm sorry I can't promise exactly when that will be though
Over the next week and a half, I'll be traveling to Japan! :D That means I won't be able to give the longer oneshots the attention I'd like for the time being. However...
My requests are open BUT ONLY for headcannons. I tend to brainstorm and finish those a lot quicker so if you've got any I can make short and sweet, feel free to send them my way (provided that they still follow my guidelines). These can be any genre you'd like, though I will admit, I've been having a hankering for tooth-rottingly sweet fluff lately for reasons that escape me.
I figured these would be easier to squeeze in between some really long layovers and keep me from keeling over in boredom during the travel.
Anddd I think that's all I have to say? Once again, I'll do my best to put up the Chuuya hs oneshot as soon as I can. Thank you all for being so patient with me 🙏
A/N: I know I said i wouldn't write more high school au but I suddenly got the idea for Ranpo and I'd never written him before so I thought I'd give it a shot. Sprinted through this in one sitting so there may be mistakes :P
Word count: 1.1k
To Ranpo, the world and every person in it was an open book.
Some more than others, he realized sitting at the library table after hours. Just one more look, he told himself, as he lowered the book he was pretending to pore over to steal another glance at you a few tables away.
This time, your eyebrows were shot straight up, jaw hanging open wide enough to swallow a fly. Your fingers caressed the edge, halfway through turning the page even though your eyes were still running across the top.
Judging by the worn cloth binding, the slender stack of pages left and the yellowed edges… one of Agatha Christie’s. The one about trains. Yes, that must be it. No wonder you looked like you just uncovered buried treasure.
Of course, he himself had seen the plot twist coming from the third chapter, but he supposed that was how any other person would react.
The scrape of your chair echoed through the quiet library, a blush briefly spreading across your face as you hurried outside, to the washroom, he presumed.
A sneaky smile slipped across Ranpo’s face. This was his chance.
Striding across the distance between your tables, he swept his hand behind the front of your open book and glanced at the cover. Murder on the Orient Express. Page 247.
He hit the nail on the head once again. Very good work indeed.
Then he skipped right back to his chair before you had a chance to catch him.
Fishing a pack of gummy candies out of his coat pocket, he tossed one in his mouth. ‘No food or drinks in the library,’ said the sign that library assistant Atsushi pointed out, to which Ranpo reacted by continuing to chew, leaving poor Atsushi to sigh and pretend he’d seen nothing.
He didn’t know when he started this little guessing game with you and your reading habits. One amber autumn day, he’d been sprawling across a table long after his study group abandoned him when he woke up and caught the sight of you crying by the windowsill, book in hand.
Tears positively flowed down your reddened face, sobs muffled beneath a clasped hand after Atsushi had politely asked you to keep the noise down. That only led to you crying more, though, chest heaving with the weight of the fictional world in your hands.
What a strange reaction, he thought at the time. He’d perused every volume cover to cover that this modest school library had to offer and not one elicited such a… fervent reaction from him. But seeing you then made him want to write a mystery of his own.
He didn't know your name— if he was being honest, he couldn't care less— but something about your effervescent expressions like live commentary made him want to keep watching you. All in hopes of answering, What could have possibly caused such a reaction?
Peeking over his crossed arms, he eyed the faded black jacket.
Ah. The Book Thief.
That was the one Fukuzawa tossed to him when he first enrolled, right after he told him to quit talking so he can work or whatever it was teachers did.
How fitting. A thief, he supposed that was what he was. Someone who stole swatches of your reading experiences like a kid sneaking around for cable TV after hours.
And so started his little sport. Every other day he’d catch you in the library with another book and challenge himself to guess what had your attention so rapt this time. Whether it was a shoulder-shaking fit of laughter from a comedy, a whistle or gasp from another reveal, or complete silence, focused eyes cutting through pages like a bamboo forest until you cleared the end.
He simply had to know what book did the damage this time. Even better if he could deduct the exact page or chapter. Sometimes even, he’d track your razor sharp gaze so intently that he’d even add a bonus round.
Here it comes, he’d think with patient, watchful eyes, 3… 2… 1…
“Oh my god,” you’d exhale when you reached the paragraph Ranpo had been reciting in his mind.
Then he’d turn around in his chair and kick his legs up with a satisfied smirk until the librarian arrived and slapped them down with a stick. And when he’d lower them with a pout, he swore he could hear you snicker from across the room.
Abruptly, he slung his bag over his shoulder with a huff and left. He was getting hungry anyway.
It wasn’t until one summer afternoon, when the air outside offered no respite and Ranpo fled inside, did he sit at his usual spot and notice his eyes trailing to a familiar corner.
Weird. Even though vacations were rolling around, you’d usually be in the library anyway, engrossed in a thicker book in light of your newly freed time.
But in your typical spot lay a single book, closed this time, and if he squinted he could make out the flap of a sticky note in the breeze.
His uniform stuck to his back, sweat still rolling down his skin. His glasses kept sliding down his nose and his stomach rumbled. To make matters worse, today’s final exam took more out of his brain than he would’ve liked to admit. He was in no mood to think more.
Couldn’t hurt to cheat just this one time.
So there he was, sneaking towards your table again, hands rubbing together like some sort of villain from your stories. What could it be this time? Fridays were usually your fantasy days, but he’d watched you churn through just about every series in the library’s limited collection.
He was going through his mental collection when he approached your table, and noticed the book was actually wrapped in brown paper, the note smiling up at him with its single deceptively innocent sentence.
“Let’s see you solve this mystery since you love tuning into me so much ;)”
Without wasting another second, Ranpo ripped through the wrapping leaving shreds that he knew Atsushi would nag him to clean later. He didn’t care. To Ranpo, any unanswered question was like a black hole calling him to be sucked in, giving himself fully to the great unknown.
For the first time since he'd ever stepped foot through the library's doors, his eyes widened.
The book was leatherbound, heavy in his hands with an all-too-familiar name across the cover. This specific book wasn’t one found in any of the library’s shelves. He knew because the author was a dear friend who hadn’t sent it to any publishing companies yet.
This was a private edition that belonged to exactly two people in the world at this moment.
Edgar Allan Poe.
The hermit didn’t have many friends, but to entrust a copy of his manuscript to you? One even Ranpo hadn’t seen yet, no less?
So Poe deemed you worthy of keeping his company. No wonder you had such exquisite taste.
Love like You | Highschool!Dazai x Reader | Oneshot
Synopsis: The romantic sequel to my highschool AU where Dazai has saved one last performance for a certain someone. In an empty classroom between the years of yesterday and the untrodden tomorrow, how do you react when he lets that mask slip? When the person you last expected to grow close to admits he's never pictured life after graduation...
Tags: Highschool au, soft romance, soft Dazai, coming of age, contemplative teenagers, implied suicidal ideation, slightly existential discussion, hopeful comfort?
Word count: 3.5k
"...But life, as it turned out, wasn't a drama.
No one knows for sure what will happen in the second act.
The character tagged for destruction
sometimes stays around till the final curtain.”
The last of Dazai’s words fell in a hush over the spellbound classroom, his bewitching voice dropping into a lull that none dared to interrupt. Only when the book in his hands snapped closed was the trance broken, a soft crescendo of applause erupting over the rows. The magician gave a graceful bow before Kunikida took the stage.
“And that concludes the final recital of this year’s poetry club,” announced Kunikida. He was soon joined by Atsushi, Kenji, a begrudging, distracted Ranpo, and the other members.
“As many of you know, as graduation is on the horizon, this was the last performance for many of our club members,” the club president continued. “We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Fukuzawa-sensei for his guidance. I know some of us have been quite the handful.” The man in question nodded sagely. Meanwhile, Kunikida threw a pointed glance at Dazai, who appeared decidedly unapologetic as he posed for selfies with the girls in the front row.
“Nevertheless, thank you all for watching over us with each passing season. We hope during this time we were able to convey what was in our hearts with our utmost sincerity,” he concluded. Classic Kunikida, scrupulous till the very end.
The row of aspiring poets sank into low bows.
Click. Your camera snapped the scene with the press of a button. No need for flash this time. The amber sunlight danced across each expression of pride, restlessness, and sorrow with raw illumination.
Being the school’s social media coordinator had its perks— front row seats to all events being one of them. Of course, this meant being subject to Dazai’s flits of curiosity, more often than not lingering longer than you felt they should. Good thing the big camera in your hands gave you a good excuse to feign complete obliviousness to this as you flipped through the photos.
“Until our paths cross once again,” finished Kunikida. And just like that, the classroom began emptying one by one, and you caught snippets of people discussing their favourite poems, dinner plans, and Ranpo yammering about some kind of graduation present to Fukuzawa, the other poetry club members in tow.
All except a certain brunet, who stayed behind to chat with a few girls gushing over his work and using that as an excuse to take even more pictures with him. Unfortunately for them, one of their takes was photobombed by a crumpled ball of paper flying straight towards Dazai’s forehead.
“Chuuyaaa, just when we got the angle right too.” Dazai’s hand flew to his head as a frown marred his face. Naturally, the girls started fussing over him, which steadily turned that frown into a sneaky smirk.
“Booo,” the ginger jeered from the very back of the class. “You call that a poem? Who let you on stage?”
Another lob, but this time Dazai caught the projectile midair. Then he doubled over, his other hand clutched his heart with an overdramatic gasp. “You wound me, dear Chuuya. My poem can’t have been that bad.”
“Worst I ever heard,” Chuuya insisted. “I could write a better one hungover and half-asleep.”
“Oho~ careful what you say in front of our precious student council member here.” Dazai wiggled his brows, his stare sliding over to you who was still fidgeting with the edits on your camera.
Chuuya merely rolled his eyes. “Tch,” he clicked his tongue. “It was a hypothetical, of course.” And yet you could feel his anxious stare boring into your back.
“I didn’t hear anything,” you called out, a dismissive hand waving behind your back as if swatting away a fly. In other words, don’t pull me into another one of your petty disagreements.
“Don’t know how you can stand there airing out your pathetic, miserable thoughts with a straight face.” Chuuya huffed, arms crossed over his half-buttoned uniform shirt. Even in his final year, you could never get him to wear it properly. “You won’t catch me dead writing something so damn depressing.”
Dazai visibly perked up at this, unveiling his poorly hidden smirk. “Is that so?” his voice was raised an octave too high, too excited.
Oh here we go. Poor Chuuya, you didn’t know what trap he’d fallen into this time but you knew this was going to be good.
With the girls still wrapped around Dazai’s finger, he made a show of clearing his throat before opening his book yet again, his voice adopting that grandiose recital tone yet again.
“Yet as long as I go on living,
since after all to persevere is my nature,
so it is I feel myself
to be a pitiable thing.”
The last two words landed with the weight of bullets.
“Hmm, quite the poet yourself, aren’t you?” sneered Dazai as giggles bubbled around him.
You couldn’t help it, you looked up from your camera just in time to catch Chuuya’s face turning a maddening shade of red. The idiot actually did it. He became monotonous with his hair.
“Dazai, you sneaky bastard…” rumbled out of Chuuya like the revving of a car engine. “Where’d you get that from?”
The culprit, meanwhile, tapped his chin pensively, index finger still bookmarking the guilty page in his book. “Oh, who knows really—”
“YOU BROKE INTO MY LOCKER AGAIN DIDN’T YOU.”
Chuuya broke into a sprint so fast that the girls ran off straight out the door. But just before he could put his hands on Dazai’s equally rebellious uniform, you let out a distinctive cough.
“Ahem, don’t think you can escape detention just cuz graduation’s next week,” you said as if it were an offhanded remark.
Chuuya, however, knew better. His hands dropped away from Dazai, who made no shy attempt at hiding his sigh of relief, and then shoved into his pockets. He then made the wise decision of heading for the door too, but not before sticking his tongue out at the brunet.
“Whatever,” he yelled over his shoulder. “Still wouldn’t call off college for a writing career.”
Unceremoniously, the door slammed closed. And then he was gone, leaving you and Dazai alone. Only the early spring breeze fluttering the curtains kept you company.
Strangely enough, Dazai didn’t follow up with another dry remark or feigned expression of hurt. For several heartbeats, he simply stood there, facing forward as his hands braced against the front desk. Gentle wind toyed with the loose brown curls framing the peculiar look on his face.
For once, he was quiet. Every word he could be saying was in the gaze he cast out the window.
Your hands moved before you asked them to. The camera pointed at him— it always seemed to gravitate towards Dazai— and captured his expression before he could pocket it away again.
Click.
It was the same contemplative look he donned during the dramatic pause in his performance, but in this fleeting instant, a different creature lurked within.
Ah. That familiar haze in his eye, the one where he pondered a question deep in the lunar valleys of his dark mind.
“All the world’s a stage,” Dazai mumbled, the fragment spoken so softly it was like a thought escaped into reality.
The corner of your lips curled, camera forgotten in your hands. “And all the men and women merely players.”
A flash of astonishment crossed Dazai’s usual meticulous face before he smoothed it out into one of his knowing smiles. “Ah the ever-multitalented Y/n strikes again. I shouldn’t be surprised you recognized Shakespeare.”
You mirrored his expression and raised a triumphant brow. “It’s not often I take you by surprise, oh wise poet.”
He just closed his eyes, his chest rising and falling with the rhythm of the wind. “I suppose you don’t need me to tell you what comes next then, but do indulge me.” This time, however, his voice was absent of all its theatrical quality. He read as if he tore a page out of his own diary,
“They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."
The curtains rustled, the melody of a distant wind chime slipping inside the classroom as you pondered the excerpt. If this was a thing that came from his diary, you didn’t know what you would pay to take a peek at the rest.
“So you disagree with him then? “Life, as it turned out, wasn't a drama”?” You quoted Dazai's words back to him.
A finger wagged in front of you, his tongue clicking. “You see, dear Y/n, the magnanimous thing about literature is that authors can build infinitely on one another's ideas and still hold the possibility for countless interpretations.”
Your brows creased. “But you're both saying practically opposite things.”
“Ah, well. The world may be a stage yet life isn't a drama. There's no script or director feeding you your next line, but you must try to play the part regardless. No one can tell you what happens next. Likewise, people…” He paused. “People don't always leave when you think they will. Sometimes they leave far sooner than you think their role is over. Sometimes they stay even after the last curtain falls.” His exposed eye flickered to you. “Do you get what I mean?”
“...No.”
A laugh. “I'm not sure I do either.”
The words hung in the air, settling over your shoulders like falling cherry blossoms.
Wind, exit stage left.
Dazai returned to something beyond the cracked-open windows.
“So we’re third-years, huh?”A soft chuckle slipped past his lips. “Has it really been a year since you punished me and Chuuya by making us hold hands in that courtyard? Feels like yesterday.”
The memory tickled a laugh up your throat. “Don’t pretend you weren’t having the time of your life back then.”
“Oh it was horrible. Chuuya didn’t even look at me for weeks after that.”
“Most peaceful weeks of my life,” you retorted. “You two did not make my job easy.”
“But you can’t say we didn’t make it fun,” countered Dazai, a hopeful gleam in his eye.
Your indignation fell away instantly. The ticking of the classroom’s clock suddenly sounded way too loud. “We still have pictures of you from that day,” you recalled instead.
A gentle smile tugged at Dazai’s lips, suddenly melancholic.
“It’s important to take pictures when you can. You never know when one moment will be the last.” He was reminiscing about something far beyond your reach, one you didn’t feel you had the right to intrude on.
Dazai let out a sigh. Whether it was of resignation, fondness, or just plain exhaustion you had no idea. Maybe high school wasn’t enough time to learn someone else after all. But it gave you just enough to know that this was the moment he chose to lower his carefully crafted mask.
A solo just for you, who stayed long after the final curtain fell.
So you leaned in close for his monologue.
“You know, I never thought I would get to this point,” he eventually said. His hands gestured vaguely around him. “Graduation. Hell, even high school. I never—” He bit his lip as a realization seemed to dawn on him. “I never thought I’d make it this far.”
For the briefest moment, the window creaked open and you caught a glimpse of his very real fear, the gaping emptiness within the boy. Your eyes snagged the bandages on his arms, his neck, around his right eye.
He caught where your stare drifted but continued anyway, “I never thought about what came next. Every morning I woke up, the only goal I had in mind was to make it through the day. Tomorrow I’d face the same problem again, but only if I make it through that day.” His hands lifted in front of him as if he were holding up evidence. “Well… it seems like I got here. And now I finally have to confront the question I’ve been avoiding every day I chose to focus on just the one ahead of me: when this is all over, what comes next?”
The question hung between you like a double-edged sword. With every word, Dazai seemed to be unravelling himself in front of you, leaving his insides exposed as if to ask what you would do with the parts he laid bare.
But before you could think about formulating an answer, he pressed on, slow steps closing the distance between your desks. “Kunikida’s been talking about taking some teaching exam in the west. Chuuya says he’ll take a trip to South Korea to learn taekwondo from a real master.” Another laugh escaped him, this time utterly devoid of mirth. “And Atsushi’s going to take up club presidency next year. Whether I like it or not, time moves forward and takes the people I care about with it.”
His feet stopped directly in front of you, peering into your eyes like they would hold the answer. “What a terribly childish thing it is, to get attached. I suppose I never grew up after deciding that I would die one day.”
Far be it from you to let silence be his sole companion once again.
“No, it’s not.” You firmly returned that doleful brown gaze. Your fists clenched on the desk’s surface for reasons unbeknownst to you. “It’s not childish.”
All Dazai did was stare. His turn to be quiet, you supposed.
“It is funny listening to everyone talk about their future, isn’t it? Like they’ve got their stories all outlined and can’t wait to move on to that next chapter.” You swallowed a dry lump in your throat. “They always assume I’ve got mine all sorted out. Student council, photography, literature, Shakespeare—” A laugh interrupted your solemn tone, before your eyes fell downcast again. Your fingers flexed in front of you, camera abandoned on the side. “But now that I’m looking at the long stretch of road ahead of me, I’m realizing… I don’t even know where to begin.”
You didn’t know when your hands decided to reach for him, for the boy who somehow always knew how to talk himself out of every situation, who now stood wordlessly before you staring at your fingertips brushing against his sleeve.
“So I guess that makes two of us,” you admitted.
He met you halfway, cradling your hand in his palms like a divine light. Heat crept up the back of your neck, all the way up to your ears, shocked when you heard yourself saying, “But if not knowing means I get to spend a little more time with you, then… maybe I don’t mind not having it all figured out just yet.”
A pause.
Soft. Dazai’s hands. Dazai’s gaze. Dazai.
His thumb caressed the groove between your thumb and forefinger, and your every thought collapsed altogether.
The touch sent goosebumps up your arm, jolting you to your senses, and you instinctively pulled away.
“I— I didn’t mean to—” you stammered, ears burning. “I didn’t mean that in the sense of—”
Dazai simply smiled, a flicker of hurt dim behind his dark irises as he withdrew his hands. Then the familiar tease slipped in, “What’s this? Is my Y/n being shy now?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” you retorted.
“Are you saying you take it back?” he asked suddenly, his jester's voice faltering, “That you’d… spend more of your time with me?”
The time. The touch. What does it all mean?
For all his frivolous facades, could this one be real?
Your hands stopped flailing around and settled in front of you, clearing your throat.
“No,” you found yourself replying sincerely. “I think time with you was exactly what made all this—” You mimicked his vague gesturing around the room. “—special. Yeah, that's the word.”
His smile vanished. Crossed arms dropped to his sides.
“And for the record,” you went on, “you act like it’s such a doomed thing to get attached. Congratulations, you found people you like having in your life. So what if maybe you have to separate for a while. That doesn’t mean your story has to end there, does it?”
“It’s never a guarantee that you can see them again—”
“Then you cherish the time you did spend together,” you interjected before Dazai could fall into another one of his spirals. “And from what I’ve seen, you already do a pretty good job of that. You honor their memory by having them live inside you every day that you choose to wake up.” Then your voice softened, “I like to think that’s enough. At least, I hope so.”
A brief silence lapsed between you like a wave.
“Hope,” Dazai repeated, tasting the word in his mouth like hard candy. “...is the thing with feathers.”
“That perches in the soul,” you finished without missing a beat. “Good thing yours has lots of room.”
Dazai stifled a laugh. “God, that was so bad. But glad to know you’re well-versed in Dickinson too.”
“Like you said.” You shrugged. “I have many talents.”
“So you’ll pardon me for acting on one of my own then,” was the last thing you heard before you caught Dazai kneeling in the corner of your eye.
His knees met the ground beside your chair, so that you didn't have to crane your neck to meet the intensity worn on his face. Nothing to shield him from the weight of his words.
“Your words are enchanting, beloved Y/n, as they always are. So terribly convincing. You almost make me want to believe you.”
Almost. That thief of a word.
A breath hitched in your throat. You took in the sight, let his words sink into your skin. Then in a gentler voice, you merely replied, “That’s fine. Contrary to what you might think, there’s no rush.”
Dazai’s lips played with the idea of a smile, before losing the battle against himself, letting the tender expression spread across his face like the light of daybreak. The corner of his eye crinkled when he looked at you again. Looks like the smile finally reached it.
“You make it sound so easy, being around me,” he breathed. “Carrying my words.”
“You’re the only one who thinks it isn’t, Dazai.”
His hands reached out this time, one guiding your left palm to rest on the cheek under his bandaged eye, the other he held as if bracing for evanescence.
“Forgive me, for acting on my selfishness once again,” Dazai began, locking eyes with you once more. “I know I can’t ask you to stay— that’s too great an ask for anyone.”
You didn’t correct him. You simply let him draw your hand closer until his warm breath wafted against your skin.
“But if I may request just one thing, before the time comes where we part ways, would you let me kiss your hand?”
Your entire body froze. The one cupping his cheek went stiff, bandage beneath your fingertips.
“Part ways?” you murmured. “Don’t think I’m letting you go that easily.”
You knew you were avoiding his question. The skin of your fingers against Dazai’s sent a shiver down your entire body with the thunderous weight of “what if” and yet…
The hand that rested against his cheek brushed the white fabric underneath with the softest ghost of a touch, as if he might shatter if you came too close. But you had to ask.
Don’t hate me for this, Dazai. But I’d rather you do it when I can have all of you.
Gingerly, your finger looped around the edge of the bandage, tugging until you could feel it loosening under your hold. You watched for his reaction, waiting for him to push you away, or run off and scream, but all he did was give a single unblinking nod.
The wraps fell away like a dove taking flight. Dazai blinked, adjusting his eye to the rays gracing your face, and let the light in.
He exhaled, “Sunsets always did do wonders for you.”
Your other hand was still clutched in his, and you gave a gentle nudge indicating he should finish what he started.
And so he did.
A smile broke across his face. No coy smirk or teasing laugh this time. Just a boyish grin reminding you who the two of you were.
Two adolescents bargaining for time on the thresholds of your lives, who really knew nothing at all. Who could say what the colors of tomorrow’s dawn may be or what shade of orange next fall would burn?
All you knew was the soft graze of Dazai’s lips across the back of your hand, the heat of his tantalizing breath, and the exact brown of both his eyes in the sun.
A glorious sepia hue.
“...I could do about anything
I could even learn how to love”
.
.
.
A/N: Hello hello hello. So sorry about how long it took to get these high school au sequels out. In fact, Chuuya's is taking so long that I decided not to keep holding Dazai's hostage and just post this one first. I maybe might have rewritten the POV in Chuuya's version which is why it's taking a bit of extra time ^^"
As for Dazai's, here's what I have to say. My, he is just so interesting to write. Honestly the first time I'd ever written him was in the original au oneshot and that was easier because I was only skimming across his external persona. Delving into his inner world is a different beast entirely. I did my best to portray him the way I thought he would be in a world absent of the mafia, while still preserving the existential parts that feel so central to his character.
The graduation anxiety parts were ripped straight from my own diary entries though so there's that ahahaha. Writing this fic put me straight back to those times and reminded me I have one more year till yet another graduation 😀🔫
Essentially what I wanted to explore in these high school aus was what kind of person they would be if they didn't have the crushing weight of the world(s) and society and life and death on their shoulders. I still think a lot of their internal battles would stay the same so I hope some of that was able to come across in the oneshot.
Oop there I go rambling again. This is why my stories take so long to write :') Please give me just a couple more day for Chuuya. I promise it will be worth the wait!
One last thing, after I post Chuuya's route for the sequel, that's where I plan to end the series. I believe I've explored all I wanted to explore with these two with these sequels, so please do not request for another continuation. I might reconsider for some other characters though, but for now, I'd really like to get back to my other requests and the Chuuya longfic I hung out to dry :)
Note: Dazai's poem was actually a small excerpt from his short story "Eight Scenes from Tokyo" found in the collection Self Portraits which I cut up into verse. And Chuuya's poem is directly taken from irl Nakahara's collection. I got both of them from @/bsd-bibliophile.
are you planning on making a part two of He Started It! | Highschool!Dazai, Chuuya x Reader | Oneshot?
Update: Dazai's part is out!
Hi hello! I would like to formally announce that yes pt 2 of the high school AU is in the works. Ik I had the poll set up for a week but it seems like an overwhelming majority want some kind of continuation so I figured might as well start both 😶
In fact I've completed the first draft of Dazai's route today and would like to share a tiny snippet with you all 👀
Now I will say, these continuations are going to be a lot more romance-forward than the first part, but I still tried to preserve some of the comedy before things got serious.
Also, the Dazai part kind of ran away from me 😭 it turned out a lot longer than I originally intended and took a much more vulnerable turn than I planned for but I'm honestly really happy with how it ended up.
My stories have a tendency of writing themselves and this is just where these two wanted to take me 🤷♀️
Anyway, it'll still be a few days before I can post them since I haven't started Chuuya's route yet, but I hope the wait will be worth it since these two idiots started occupying my brain 24/7 >.<
Thank you guys again for your love and support and I hope I'll get to share more with y'all soon 🫶
Hi hi! I've read your request rules, so I hope I'm doing this right :')
Anyways, I'm not too sure if you do platonic reader stuff so feel free to skip this if you don't, but I'd like to request some headcanons with Chuuya and a pm! Reader (My mind thinks of like a subordinate under him but they can be an executive or whatever) that acts similarly to Albatross. Yes this is because I like angst.
That's it. Have a great day and night ( ˶ˆᗜˆ˵ )
A/N: oh boy if this is cuz of the recent stormbringer chapters then I feel you :’) We just can’t give Chuuya a moment of peace can we. Also this is the first time I've written hcs like this so I'm not sure I did it right, feedback is always appreciated!
Ghost of You | Chuuya x PM!reader | Headcanons
Synopsis: in which Executive Nakahara receives a haunting disguised as an unexpected recruit
Tags: Chuuya x PM!reader (platonic), angst, ouch stormbringer crumbs
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who wondered why the hell he’d need a demolitions expert with pyromanic (emphasis on manic) tendencies in his division, but being forced to accept this new recruit anyway on Mori’s orders
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who regarded your little chitchats with everyone as useless drivel until he sees how your energy lights up his other subordinates.
The difference is night and day when he’d talk to them before you. Anything he’d say would leave them tense and stiff— not good for the mission— and not due to any fault of his own. This is just the way of the commanding officer.
But with you, their shoulders shake with laughter and the fear falls from their eyes. One word could light a fire under them ready to charge into combat— as equals. If laughter was medicine, then you were one hell of a doc.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who questions why you wear shades everywhere, even indoors, to which you reply “never know when you need to make a bang.”
He deadpans. “Did’ya bring anything with you other than your god awful jokes?”
“Ten tonnes of TNT. I got a string of dynamite strapped to my inner coat too.”
“...Forget I asked.”
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who has to physically steer you away from one corner of the garage every time he’s about to bring you on a mission.
A whistle escapes your lips, eyes still snagged on the vehicle. “Sweet bike you got there, Boss. How come you never take it out on jobs?”
“Don’t touch it.”
“Come on~ just one ride. Please~”
“Can’t you take an order for once,” he sighs. Looks like he’s gonna need an extra cigarette today.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who sees how swiftly and easily you integrate yourself into his division.
Soon enough, you exchange paperwork with his men as often as playing cards, pass around bombs like bottles around a table, warm hands patting you on the back wherever you go.
If he catches one of his units slacking off, it’s usually because you dragged them into the pool hall again.
“You’re such a canker sore, Boss,” you whine as he drags you by the collar.
“The hell is that supposed to mean?”
You cross your arms. “What’s that saying about ‘All work and no fun’? I was just thinking the guys could blow off some steam.”
“Well all fun and no work gets you killed. Where’s that report I asked you for this morning?”
“Alright, fine, fine,” you relent, swatting his hand off. “What a grouch.”
His heart stops. When did he get like this? And didn’t he swear to himself he’d never step foot in that pool hall again?
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who refuses to send you on those most dangerous missions despite knowing full-well how capable you are and then stares off in his office asking himself why the hell he just did that.
“It’s cuz you’re still a newbie,” he argues.
“Bullshit. I can dismantle a bomb in 60 seconds flat and set one up in half that time. You know damn well you’re wasting your best explosives tech.” A stubborn thumb points to your chest. “Name one other person in your division better suited to this job than me.”
He can’t. He knows this. But the stupid weight on his chest keeps him immobile.
“I said no. That’s final.”
“I’m going anyway,” you yell over your shoulder as the door swings closed.
“Don’t—” slips out before Chuuya hears himself. For a single heartbeat, silence occupies his office, makes room for itself on his couch like an unwelcome guest.
Eventually, Chuuya grumbles, “Fucking hell.”
And yet, he can’t stop the devastating smile that sneaks onto his face.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who absentmindedly finds himself complimenting your taste in clothes one unsuspecting morning, “Nice coat, the fur trim’s a cool touch.”
You flash a toothy grin back at him, puffing out your coat. “Thanks man, yours is sick too! It’s a different shade of black than usual.”
“Huh.” He glances at what he threw on in a rush that morning. “Guess it is.”
So someone notices that not all blacks look the same. It isn’t until you’re halfway down the corridor did he realize his subordinate just called him “man.” And somehow, he couldn’t find it in himself to care.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who suddenly finds his nightly rooftop smokes a little less cold in the warmth of another lit cigarette.
One balanced between his lips, he doesn’t even have to look when he passes the extra roll to you.
Some nights, with the shadow of the moon obscuring your silhouette, he can almost forget who he’s standing beside. Even easier when you lapse into stretches of rare silence, nothing but the soft glow of two embers above the canopy of city lights.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who will never admit that every time he tasks you with disarming a bomb or rigging a vehicle full of explosives, he’ll always hold his breath until he knows you’re a safe distance away
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who now has an extra pair of sunglasses in the glove compartment of his car. Because now he’ll know who to blame if this one blows up.
.𖥔 ݁ ˖Executive Nakahara ˎˊ˗ who loses yet another battle with the bottle, mumbling half-asleep during a night of jovial celebration.
His head is on the counter when you catch him murmuring, “‘tross…”
“Wazzat boss? Didn’t quite get that.” You scoot closer until your ear hovers close to his troubled face. You’ve never seen him like this before, with so much of his anguish unmasked.
“Your bike… ‘course I take her out every week so she don’t rust.”
This makes you freeze, the image of one chained corner of the garage springing to mind.
The motorcycle he never lets anyone touch.
The one you caught him polishing one Sunday morning, and then the next.
“She’s safe with me, don’t you worry,” is the last thing you need to hear.
Your next instinct comes as naturally as waking. Without a word, you shrug your coat off and drape it over your sleeping executive.
Yeah, he’s worked hard enough today. Best let him rest.
"And I chase it down with a shot of truth
Dancing through our house with the ghost of you"
Lowk need a sequel for that high school au🫦 will only one of them get a crush on reader? Will they fight? Is polyamory possible? Sooo many interesting ideas
Helloo anon~ firstly, i'm so happy to hear you enjoyed the skk x reader high school au and I'm really grateful for all the love everyone's showing it 🫶
I had a blast writing it, though I have to admit, I wasn't planning to follow it up with anything. But now you've got me thinking, would you guys like to see a sequel of some kind?
If I did write a continuation, it'd probably lean more into romance than the first part (assuming I go the route of one or the other develops feelings for reader), though some of the humor will definitely still be there. Alternatively, I could go for a similar vibe as the original and just have the three of them annoy each other in another school-type scenario.
So I wanted to ask what you guys would like to see most, if you think the story should have a sequel at all.
High school AU Sequel?
No, it does not need a sequel
Chuuya x reader route
Dazai x reader route
Both separately
Another comedic scenario (minimal romance)
Voting ended onAug 1
If you prefer the last option, feel free to leave any ideas you have of what the next school scenario should be! Seeing all your creative ideas really gets me inspired to write more of these ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡
can i request a highschool au w skk x reader student council reader. The reader has been instructed to watch them throughout skk detention.
He Started It! | Highschool!Dazai, Chuuya x Reader | Oneshot
A/N: Hiya! Thanks for requesting. I had so much fun writing this :D
Tags: high school AU, slice of life, comedy, skk shenanigans
Word count: 3.5k
Pt 2 is out now! Dazai, Chuuya (coming soon)
“So, two hours with the school’s number-one martial artist and the vice president of the poetry club.”
A heavy sigh dragged out of you as you swept your eyes over the classroom.
“Sure, can’t think of a better way to spend my Friday afternoon. This should be fun.”
In the left back corner sat an increasingly irritated fluff of orange hair, a scowl marring his petite face, his legs kicked up on the desk in front of him as his chair swung haphazardly on its back legs. A bead of sweat rolled down your temple. You were going to have to reprimand him for this later.
Meanwhile, directly in front of you in the very first row was Dazai, a head of shaggy brown hair eclipsing one of his eyes, bandages poking out of his uniform sleeves and collar. Where he went off to acquiring such injuries you’d never know. You had never seen him lift so much as a tennis ball in your life.
It was like the sun and moon were sitting on direct opposite ends of the class, forcing your gaze to bounce endlessly between them.
Dazai was absolutely beaming at you over laced fingers. His posture all prim and proper in spite of his dire situation.
You quirked your eyebrow at him. Arms haughtily crossed over the front of your blazer as you leaned against the teacher’s desk.
“What are you looking so smart about?” you quipped, chin tilting up. “You do know why you’re here, don’t you?”
“If you mean getting to spend two hours staring at a beauty like you, then yes, I know exactly why I’m here.” The line slipped out as easily as breathing air. His hands extended in front of him like a camera and his exposed eye squinted. “My, look at the way the sunset frames your face. It’s like watching the painting of the Mona Lisa.”
Geez. No wonder this guy was so popular.
“Shut the hell up,” growled Chuuya. His foot slammed against the desk’s surface. “I’m missing jiu jitsu practice because you, stupid ass mackerel."
“Language,” you hissed with closed eyes. “And feet off the desk.”
This earned you a staredown with those fired up azure eyes, but eventually, Chuuya turned his head to the side with a “tch,” then dropped his feet.
“It’s bad enough you guys were punished with a week of detention. Don’t make it any longer.” Your hands flew up to massage your temples. “Why did they have to make me the unwitting babysitter?”
Dazai’s response slid in uninvited like leaves under a door. “Because you’re the student council’s beloved and dependable secretary?” he offered up.
“And you,” you snapped. “Stop talking before I wrap one of those bandages around that pretty mouth of yours. I bet you think you’re quite the charmer.”
The devilish smirk that crept onto his face warned you you’d fallen right into his trap. “Oh~ careful, secretary Y/n, you just called me pretty. It’s working, isn’t it?”
“No,” you blurted out immediately, despite the heat rising to the tips of your ears. “It’d be prettier if it stayed shut.”
Dazai made a zipping motion across his lips then tossed the imaginary key over his shoulder.
A loud scrape sounded further behind where Chuuya shoved his desk into the chair in front of him. “Oi, if you’re gonna punish me then at least put me in a different room than this smartass.” An accusatory finger jabbed toward Dazai’s direction. “This shit’s worse than just getting detention.”
“Then maybe next time you’ll think before ruining all the festival decorations,” you countered, your palms hitting the teacher’s desk. “The only reason I’m here instead of the teachers is because they’re all busy helping the rest of the council clean up the mess in the courtyard.” You jutted your chin towards the windows on the right overlooking said courtyard.
Stray strands of ribbon were tangled in the trees and strewn between the lamp posts. A handful of teachers were mopping around a spot where a red paint bucket fell over the concrete. To make matters worse, the paper-mache mascot was split in half, lying face down in a flower bed.
“It’s like a crime scene out there,” you mourned, “and after we spent all week making the preparations too.”
Dazai whistled when he followed your gaze. “Beautiful. The splash of red really ties everything together.”
“It’s this idiot’s fault. He started it so you should blame him, not me,” Chuuya huffed, sinking further down his chair, legs stretching in the most improper position possible.
“Is that so?” A skeptical brow raised. “Let’s take a look at the security footage together, shall we?”
You swiped the remote off the desk and summoned the projector canvas screen down with a click of a button.
Behind your back, Dazai snuck away from his chair to turn off the lights. “For cinematic effect,” he whispered across the room to an enraged Chuuya.
Soon enough, the recording loaded on the screen.
You cleared your throat and began to narrate like a sports commentator, “Here, we have a lone Chuuya punching and kicking at the air behind the gym while there in the background, various student council members run around setting up decorations for tomorrow’s festival.”
“I don’t know a lot about sports, but I don’t remember jiu jitsu having any special kicks,” Dazai remarked.
“That’s because those are karate moves,” Chuuya interjected. “Idiot.”
“You look even smaller in 2x speed,” Dazai found himself choking on his own laughter.
“I’LL SHOW YOU DEATH IN 2X SPEED.”
Both were already on their feet until you snapped your fingers at the screen. “Eyes up, we haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.”
“Yes, Y/n-san,” they answered in unison, which somehow was another cause for glaring at each other before sitting back down.
Your announcer voice returned, “Chuuya continues this for another, say, five minutes before— oh, what’s this? Dazai appears around the corner and says something, which unfortunately the cameras don’t pick up, and then tosses a beverage to Chuuya, which hits him square on the face. A perfect hit!”
Dazai was failing miserably to stifle a laugh when Chuuya marched up behind him and grabbed him by the collar. “HOW COULD YOU MISS SUCH AN EASY TOSS??”
Dazai’s hands were raised in a placating gesture which didn’t seem to be helping his case at all. “In my defense, I don’t usually toss to someone of your height, chibi.”
“You wanna go again? Alright let’s go,” Chuuya seethed under his breath.
A firm grip landed on Chuuya’s shoulder, tearing him away from the brunet. “I could have you kicked out of jiu jitsu, Nakahara,” you said in a sickeningly sweet tone that didn’t match your death grip. “Don’t test me.” Miraculously, he stopped resisting and you shoved him into the seat next to Dazai.
You unpaused the recording and proceeded to narrate, “Now here’s where it gets interesting. Chuuya swings… Dazai evades… but wait— Chuuya’s fist catches the support wire hanging around one of the poles. The whole string of banners comes down!”
Chuuya winced at the recollection.
“Oho, better work on your aim, Chuuya,” Dazai chided.
Before Chuuya got a chance to retaliate, you pressed on, “The banners fall around Dazai like a second set of bandages, but as Chuuya was about to walk away, Dazai tugs on the wire and stops him from leaving. Outraged, Chuuya turns around and throws another punch straight at Dazai’s face. Unfortunately for Dazai, he was not quick enough to dodge this one.”
“Serves you right,” Chuuya muttered.
Dazai gingerly rubbed the adhesive bandage across his right cheek. “So mean…”
“Anyway, this time, Dazai decides to fight back! He returns the punch to Chuuya’s jaw, and then…” you squinted at the screen. “Well, folks, it looks like our duo moved so fast that the only thing the camera picked up was a tumbleweed of arms and legs. This tumbleweed then proceeds to roll across the courtyard, tearing up every ribbon, prop and paint set in the way.”
“Those ribbons only fell because he tripped me,” Chuuya pointed.
“I was trying to steer you towards the pond but it seems I underestimated your negligible mass.”
“SAY THAT AGAIN—”
“Would either of you like to explain the exploding paper-mache mascot, hmm? Who caused that?”
For a moment, neither answered.
And then Dazai added, “That thing is even taller than you, chibi, hehe.”
“Hey we’ve still got a perfectly good unused pond, right?”
All you could do was sigh, unpausing the video for the last time. “Eventually, you manage to knock over the ladder where a student council member is holding a bucket of red paint.”
The recording ended with them staring shamefully at the ground while the student council president scolds them.
Said pair now exchanged half-guilty-half-agitated glances at each other while you merely pinched the bridge of your nose. “Now, because of you two, tomorrow’s festival will look depressing with half of its decorations torn up. We’ll never be able to remake them all in time.”
Chuuya’s eyes flickered up at you, scratching the back of his head when he mumbled, “Sorry… I know you worked hard on that, Y/n.”
“What’s this?” Dazai gasped much too dramatically. “You hit your head harder than I thought, Chuuya. We should rush you to the infirmary asap.”
“Y/n, please, just one punch,” pleaded Chuuya. “Then I’ll sit down all nice and quiet these two hours.”
He was staring at you with the most earnest ocean-blue eyes you’d ever seen. You had to shut your own before you sank in.
“Thanks for apologizing, but no.” The hope in Chuuya’s eyes died. “I appreciate it, really, but sorry doesn’t fix the courtyard.”
“Neither will us sitting here, but I digress,” Dazai sighed.
“Maybe not.” A smile slipped onto your face. “But it’ll give you something to think about. I know that sounds like heaven to you Dazai but try not to have too much fun. You will both spend the next—” You threw a glance at the clock on the wall. “—97 minutes sitting here in complete silence.”
“But—”
“Not. A. Word.”
“Can I at least go back to my seat?” Chuuya asked.
“Fine.”
“Complete silence” lasted all of twenty-five minutes.
All this while, you sat at the front with this weekend’s homework spread across the desk. Chuuya, who seemed to have exhausted all his explosive energy, dozed off with his head down. His arms were still crossed and his fingers twitched as if he were grappling in his sleep, and he was muttering something about “freaking mackerels" in his sleep.
You supposed being the school's top athlete drained his body of much needed rest. Maybe that’s why he wasn't growing much.
When Dazai noticed, he whipped out a notebook from under his desk and made quick work of tearing up some of the pages. By the time you looked up again, a paper airplane arced through the room and poked Chuuya's shoulder.
Poor Chuuya grumbled in his sleep and swatted at the spot, probably assuming it was a fly. Unfortunately for him, the disturbance was much more persistent than a fly.
Said disturbance wasted no time in folding up another plane and, tongue stuck out, sent it flying— where it hit its target directly on the forehead.
Chuuya's eyes flew open. “THE HELL WAS THAT.”
Immediately Dazai turned back to the front and twiddled his thumbs together, whistling like he wasn't the menace he was.
Chuuya found the plane at his feet, crumpled it into a ball and launched it at the mop of brown hair.
“Hey~ Chuuya, what'd you do that for?” Dazai whined, rubbing the back of his head as if it actually hurt. Knowing it was Chuuya who threw it, it probably did.
“You started it!”
A pathetic frown dawned on Dazai's face. “Do you have any evidence for that?”
“Who else could've done it?” growled Chuuya.
“Y/n-chan, obviously.”
You merely shot him a deadpan look, and then returned to the desk where one hand was still furiously scribbling away integration by parts while the other held the calculus textbook open. “Yes, because I clearly have the time and energy for that.”
Chuuya continued glaring daggers at Dazai but miraculously chose to stay in his seat. Before long, he was in dreamland again.
Until—
Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.
His eyelids twitched.
Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap.
A sharp inhale sounded from the other end of the room.
“Dazai.”
“Yes~?” he replied much too innocently.
“Did you pick up drumming recently or is your life’s only purpose to make mine miserable?”
The brunet merely spread his hands in a shrugging gesture. “Your problem, dear Chuuya, is that you think much too small. I don’t see why I can’t do both.”
Chuuya paused, pondering something with exquisite intensity. “Y/n.”
“Don’t rope me into this,” you groaned.
“The bastard’s smiling, isn’t he,” he asked as more of a statement than anything.
You took one glance at Dazai before responding. “Why, yes, it appears he is.”
Tap tap tap.
And because you knew better, you threw your notebook over your head and flopped over the surface of the desk.
In a single blink, Chuuya managed to lunge across the room and choke Dazai by the collar. Dazai had the courtesy of letting him get a few strangles in before he wrestled Chuuya back.
The catfight went on for as long as it took for your self-preservation to fully leave your body.
Under your calculus notes, your eyebrow twitched.
Once. Twice. Three times.
Eventually, you dragged your will to live back inside, kicking and screaming much like the pair in front of you.
“BOTH OF YOU STOP RIGHT NOW BEFORE I ASK THE VICE PRINCIPAL TO GIVE YOU ANOTHER WEEK OF DETENTION.”
“But Y/n-chan, he started it this time!” Dazai disputed through a nose bleed.
“Don’t even start you damn—”
You drew in a sharp breath and clasped your hands together. “I SAID STOP IT, THIS INSTANT.”
Both of them froze as if they’d been paused on a replay. Then the weight of your threat sank in.
“Wait, you can’t do that! I have a competition next week, I can’t waste jiu jitsu practice time on detention,” Chuuya protested, hands dropping from Dazai’s collar.
“I literally could not care less.” You crossed your arms. “It’s bad enough you two had to ruin the festival, now I can’t even get my homework done in peace. Can you selfish brats think of anyone but yourselves for one afternoon?”
Despite all the fighting he’d done, this was the first time Chuuya looked genuinely injured. He averted your gaze to the floor and shuffled one of his feet.
Meanwhile, Dazai had the nerve to look remarkably pleased with himself. He studied you with a keen gleam in his eye, wiped the trail of blood from his nose, and then said in an even voice, “I’ve got an idea.”
“Like I said, I don’t care,” you huffed.
“It’s more of an offer, really.” Dazai rubbed his hands together. “You might want to hear this, Y/n.”
“No.”
“I know how we can get the festival ready by tomorrow.”
You hesitated, turning over his words like a figure-8 ball, trying to decide if he was bluffing. Eventually, you relented, “...I’m listening.”
A smile slipped onto Dazai’s face as he began outlining his proposal. “You know, I happen to know that Kyouka-chan from arts and crafts club is quite adept at scissors. She could help remake all the ribbons and string decorations.”
“You’re offering me one girl?” you snapped.
“Patience, Y/n.” Dazai winked. You suddenly understood Chuuya’s urge to slap him out of this room. “Whoa, where’d the sudden bloodlust come from?” He hugged his arms and shivered as if he heard that thought. Impressive.
“Anyway, I also know that our dear poetry club president, Kunikida-kun is rather handy at paper. I’m sure he could rebuild the mascot in a jiffy.”
The knit between your eyebrows slowly relaxed, the appeal of the offer now revealing itself to you. But you let Dazai continue.
“Not to mention Kenji-kun can move tables with the lift of his finger. And Atsushi-kun would drop anything after I give him a call—”
“That’s not a brag, you sleazy dirtbag,” Chuuya interjected.
You held up a hand. “I’m listening.”
Dazai planted his hands on his hips. “In fact, I could call up the whole poetry and arts and crafts club here right now. We’ll have the whole place cleaned and ready to present by tomorrow, no sweat.”
How a person like him could have this much influence you had no idea. But the look in Dazai’s eye told you this was no joke. He was serious about getting the job done. Far be it from you to refuse.
You heaved a heavy sigh and stuck a hand in front of Dazai. “Has anyone ever told you, you should’ve joined public relations club instead?”
Dazai grinned. The look of someone who knew they would get what they wanted.
“All the time. Everyone wishes they had me.”
You and Chuuya simultaneously rolled your eyes.
Dazai’s hand moved but before it met yours, he added, “This is, of course, in exchange for cancelling our detention time.”
Your hand nearly dropped, but then your eyes flicked to the window overlooking the courtyard, where the student council treasurer was still desperately picking loose confetti out of a tree. Only half a dozen people worked on the scene. Any chances of them finishing all the work by nightfall were as good as gone.
“Even this week’s?” you asked tentatively.
Dazai nodded, loose brown curls falling across his forehead. “Well, can’t have Master Sensei here missing his practices and embarrassing our school, can you?”
“YOU’RE ONE TO TALK ABOUT EMBARRASSING.” Chuuya raised his fist but before he could think about using it, he gave you an anxious stare.
You squinted. Looked between Dazai’s annoyingly smug face and Chuuya’s unease.
“...Deal.”
Your hand received a firm squeeze from Dazai. Chuuya was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“—On one condition.”
Chuuya’s feet planted firmly to the floor again when you looked straight at him.
“You call over the jiu jitsu and karate clubs too.”
His jaw dropped open, an indignant look took over his face. “Hah? And why would I do that?”
“Do you want your practice time back or not?”
“...Fine.”
It was at this moment that Chuuya should have known he was better off picking detention.
(...)
“What am I looking at?” Atsushi whispered as a drop of sweat rolled down his forehead, stack of boxes in hand.
Kyouka followed his gaze but continued cutting around the chain of paper bunnies. “Dunno. Seems like they’re not gonna move though.”
A train of karate club members passed between them and the spectacle, each struggling with uncontrollable laughter as they helped move props across the courtyard.
Kunikida materialized behind them and knocked a rolled up sheet of newspaper on both their heads. “Will you two quit staring and get back to work?” he screeched.
“But Kunikida-san, look,” Atsushi instructed, lifting his finger once the train passed.
The newspaper in Kunikida’s hand went slack, his jaw dropping by just a millimeter. Then he sighed, “Dazai… why am I not surprised.”
The view was, in fact, a billion dollar sight to behold.
Two fold-up chairs were planted in the middle of the courtyard for all to see. Sitting in them were Dazai and Chuuya. In the space between them, Dazai’s left hand clasped firmly around Chuuya’s right, while everybody else worked around them and watched.
Dazai flashed the brightest grin and threw up a peace sign when a group of passersby snapped pictures.
Meanwhile, Chuuya looked like he was visibly holding himself back from spontaneous combustion. One hand was obscuring his face, shoulders positively heaving with tales of wrath untold.
You strode up to them with an exceptionally satisfied gleam in your eyes. A job well done indeed.
“So this was why you wanted me to call over my friends?” Chuuya hissed between his fingers.
“Mhm,” you hummed, tilting your head at him. “Much better than two weeks of detention, wouldn’t you say?”
“Y/n,” he pleaded once again, “why don’t you just let me help out with everyone else, huh? Wouldn’t I be more useful that way?”
You wagged a finger in his face and clicked your tongue. “Nuh uh, everyone agreed the most useful thing you two can do is stay. Right. Here.”
Dazai seemed to have taken this as a sign to lace his fingers with Chuuya’s and swing their joined hands back and forth in the air. Chuuya desperately began to twist and wriggle his way out before you interrupted, “If either of you let go, the weeks of detention come back.”
His arm went limp. It looked like Chuuya was physically trying to shrink into himself against all laws of physics.
At this point, he was making incomprehensible noises you couldn’t even begin to decipher. If you had to wager a guess, it was probably some obscene mix of profanities and your name, as well as Dazai’s.
Speaking of, he was positively beaming from his seat.
“This is funnn, Chuuya. We get to sit back and relax while everyone else does the heavy lifting,” Dazai proclaimed, his free hand waving at the stunlocked trio of Atsushi, Kyouka, and Kunikida.
“I would not call this public humiliation ritual fun.”
You slowly bent down to whisper in his ear, “Maybe you’ll remember this next time you think about roughhousing on school property.”
In the setting sun, Chuuya’s face somehow burned even redder.
And yet at the end of the day, you had to admit you could almost see how Dazai could enjoy provoking him to the brink of insanity every day.
“No fair, Y/n-chan~ why don’t you hold my other hand and whisper in my ear instead?”
“Absolutely not.”
Almost.
The ending was inspired by this one meme I saw years ago and somehow felt was perfect for this scenario >:)
Should there be a sequel :0? Vote here
Psst if you liked this, you might want to check out my Chuuya long-fic :)
Tldr: opening limited x reader requests. Please scroll down to read guidelines before submitting one
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Hii 👋 This is the first non-chapter post I've made on this account and I just wanted to say a couple things:
First, to anyone who's read The Fox & The Owl, the Chuuya longfic I've been posting so far, even if it's just a single chapter or a line, thank you for giving my writing a chance ^^
This is the first long-form story I've seriously committed to and I'm really excited to see where the story goes, so rest assured it's not going anywhere. Updates may be a little irregular because of life and travel and stuff though 😅
Second, yes you heard right, I am opening requests!
While The Fox & The Owl will still be my priority, I thought it’d be fun to sprinkle in a few short oneshots, headcanons and drabbles in between chapters. I think it'd be a nice way to keep my creative brain juices flowing instead of hyperfixating on the same one story 24/7. Gives me an excuse to try my hand at writing a couple of different characters since I'd ordinarily never have the chance to include them in my story.
I'd love to hear any ideas you guys might have!
That being said, I do have some request guidelines. Please give these a quick read before submitting anything:
1) I will not write nsfw.
I'm more interested in exploring other ways of expressing intimacy in relationships.
2) Please be as specific as you can about your request.
When submitting the request, please state whether you'd prefer a reader oneshot, or some headcanons or a drabble. Feel free to be as specific or niche or unconventional with your request as you'd like. Just make sure that if genre matters to you (fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, etc.), you should include that asw. You could also send me any song or poem you'd like me to take inspo from.
With the time I have these will probably be on the shorter side but knowing me I'll probably eat those words 😶
3) I may not accept every request.
I tend to be a very mood-based writer so I can't guarantee that I'll get to answer every one. Please don't take it personally if I don't get to yours!
4) I can't promise any deadlines.
It's currently summer vacation but I've been traveling a lot and have a couple of things going on, so there will be periods where I won't be able to write much at all :(
5) Some characters are outside of my comfort zone.
Not because I don't like them, there are just a few characters I don't feel like I know well enough to write confidently. Of course, I'm more than comfortable with Chuuya, as well as the ADA and PM characters, but for some of the later characters like DoA or Hunting dogs, I’d hesitate because I just don't know enough about them yet. (*cough cough* I'm anime-only)
6) AUs are always welcome!
I just think they're super fun so feel free to shoot those my way too and I'll see what I can do >:3
...
That's all from me! My ask box is officially open, as are my dms if you just wanna chat or fawn over Chuuya. I look forward to hearing from you guys 🧡
This chapter is part of my Chuuya x reader long-fic, so please make sure to read the previous parts first :)
Tags: chuuya x f!reader, slow burn (reallyyyy slow burn), partners to lovers, original female characters, focus on personal growth, angst, mystery, action, attempt at humour
Warnings: violence, swearing, psychological trauma, the usual bsd shenanigans
Chapter word count: 4.7k
Summary
"Already tainted by sorrow
Is a fox's splendid fur used for a coat
Already tainted by sorrow
Is the snowflake that shrinks before it falls"
You cannot make something out of nothing. This is the fundamental rule of your life.
Ice cannot be formed without water.
Trails cannot be followed without clues.
Hypotheses cannot be tested without evidence.
For ten years, everyone told you to give up the search for your parents, brilliant scientists who vanished from the criminal underworld in a fiery blaze, every shred of existence devoured. No addresses, no experiments, not even a surname to call home.
In pursuit of answers, you turn to the Port Mafia, for who would know more than Yokohama’s largest criminal organization?
But you are about to learn that what awaited after every question were not answers, but endless sprawling labyrinths— and Chuuya Nakahara, the man you are now expected to call your superior officer, with far too many opinions on how to do your job.
As the truth crackles through the icy surface and warmth threatens to melt long-frozen cores, you must confront a possibility shaking the very ground beneath your feet:
What do you do when what you’ve spent your life searching for doesn’t want to be found?
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4
Chapter 5 - Cerulean
In Yokohama, sea salt stirs in the air long before the harbor ever comes into view.
It infiltrates your tongue, mixing with the residue of this morning’s coffee and the sweat trickling down your forehead in a briny tang. Down below, the ocean of sparkling water nearly blinds you with every lingering glance.
Your sworn enemy for the day, however, is not the fleet of foes carrying stolen cargo, but the wind. It whips through the open helicopter window and tousles the hair you spent methodically braiding in front of the mirror, steals sheets of your reports when your grip loosened for an unsuspecting moment, and blows the occasional hapless insect and spray of salt water into your eyes. It even nearly rips the ribbon off your brooch before you clasp a protective hand over it.
When you avert your gaze inside, you expect to see Chuuya with his arms crossed and nodding off, or lost between the lines of the mission report, but instead, the entire upper half of his body dangles outside of the aircraft. A hand rests over his hat lest the wind snatches it away, his azure irises scouring the endless expanse of matching blue ahead. A massive overjoyed grin has taken over his usually grouchy face.
Or maybe that’s just how he looks when he’s not schooling you.
One would think he was enjoying the thrill of a rollercoaster drop, though to him, this would probably be equivalent.
Your stomach starts to plummet, and you have a feeling it’s not due to the altitude.
Eventually he climbs back in and tugs the ends of his gloves tighter around his wrist. “How many?” he asks.
The pair of binoculars lower to your chest, your eyes still squinting at the vague black dots in the distant horizon. “It’s hard to make out from this far, but I think around a dozen.”
Chuuya frowns, shooting you a pointed look. “You think?”
“I believe there to be a dozen,” you correct instantly.
“Better,” he scoffs. “Remember what I told you about certainty.”
You instinctively mirror his expression, the familiar itch of an argument clawing its way up your throat. “But, sir, reporting anything I’m uncertain about could lead to incorrect inductive reasoning. It’s important to account for unforeseen circumstances.”
His hand drops from unbuttoning his coat, squinted eyes slide towards you and stop at your face, as if he’s trying to determine whether or not you’re being serious. “The whole damn battlefield is unforeseen circumstances. You think the world’s gonna stop so you can gather more information for your case file?”
“Well no, but if I could increase our chances of success with a little more certainty then it might help—”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The problem with you investigative types is this,” Chuuya contends. “When I talk about certainty, I don’t mean knowin’ everything about what you’re fighting. You’re lucky if you can predict a damn thing that happens out there.” His arms cross over his chest, his chin raised in defiance. “What I’m talkin’ bout is conviction— in yourself. If you step out there second-guessing yourself, you’re basically asking to get your ass handed to you.”
A lump rises in your throat, arms hanging awkwardly by your side.
“When you walk in, you should believe you’ve already won. That’s how you fight.” His eyes shine with pride as if recounting all the victories he’s racked up over the years. “Got that?”
Absolutely not. There was only so much fighting I had to do in an interrogation room.
“Yes, sir,” you concede anyway.
Now is when he finally decides to take a look at the mission report and flips through the pages. He doesn’t look at you when he speaks again, “You remember what the boss’s orders were, right?”
Earlier that morning, Mori’s voice carried across the Port Mafia’s HQ rooftop as you clambered into the helicopter. “Thirteen minutes ago, we received word that our latest export shipment had been intercepted by an organization we recently dismantled. The flotilla carrying this stolen merchandise was spotted to have just left the harbor.”
One of Elise’s paper airplanes arced through the air and crashed into Mori’s shoulder, before crumpling beside his polished shoes. “Ensure the ships do not leave Japanese waters.” A smile slipped onto his face as he crushed the plane beneath his toes. “Surrender them to the sea if you must.”
You swallow at the memory, sweat continuing to roll down your temple. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t understand why you’re so excited. Aren’t we just retrieving stolen cargo?”
Chuuya jabs an accusatory finger in your direction. “So you did hear him wrong.”
Another bead of sweat drips down your chin. “What did you hear then?”
“What I heard…” Mirth lights up his face again, a snicker escaping his lips. “Was give ‘em hell.”
Silence stretches in the gap between you. You take in his words, turn them over in your head like he passed you a weighted coin.
A frown suddenly crosses his face, the shadow cast over his eyes darkening when his chin lowers. His thumb points behind him at the open window. “If you don’t have the stomach for this, you might as well go home now.” And yet, the corners of his lips curl ever so slightly in a thinly veiled smirk.
Ah, so that’s what this is. A challenge.
Chin up, shoulders back, eyes forward. Your gaze is an arrow cast straight to your enemy’s heart, unfettered, unflinching, unforgiving. Finally, smile, like the sheen of an unsheathed katana.
That was how Kouyou taught you to hold yourself.
Brandishing the smirk for him, you toss the binoculars aside and rest your hands on your hips. “Bit late to turn back, isn’t it? If those are the boss’s orders then who am I to disappoint him?”
This time, Chuuya laughs unabashedly, the kind that regales the winds outside. “Knew Boss wouldn’t assign me dead weight.”
All your newly gathered confidence is suddenly knocked out along with the air in your lungs. The helicopter lurches and the space inside feels lost to gravity.
Chuuya quirks an eyebrow at your nonresponse but makes no more remarks, opting instead to lean over the window’s edge again. “Just up ahead now, Takashi,” he yells to the pilot to win over the wind, “Get in close to the ships at the back of the fleet.” Then he turns to you and barks, “You take the east wing. I’ll sweep the west.”
You respond with a stolid nod. The pilot shoots back a thumbs up, and before long, the flotilla appears within view. And yet the distance between you and the water stretches like the space between today and tomorrow.
As the helicopter begins its angular, choppy descent, your stomach recoils with every sway. Eventually, it draws near enough that you can distinguish the individual crewmen running about across the deck. The waters below crash over each other and make you wish you’d skipped breakfast that morning like a certain engineer.
But before you can complete that thought, Chuuya’s voice cuts in. “We’ll be jumping soon. Not scared of heights are you?”
The solid cadence of his voice makes it clear there’s no room for failure— not to mention weaknesses. Sunlight slips inside, rays limning the strands of Chuuya’s wild hair billowing around the sharp cut of his jaw like live flames. His coat frees itself off his shoulders and flies to the back of the aircraft.
One hand rests on the door handle. One chance.
Shrugging off whatever grasp motion sickness had on you, you steel your nerves against the howling winds.
Shoulders back, you sweep one arm through the air and bend in an exaggerated bow. “After you,” you simper.
Chuuya merely flashes a grin. And then barrels out of the open door.
Now there’s no one left to yell at you for being slow. No one needed to.
Chin up, eyes forward.
What comes next wasn’t hers, though.
The leap.
And then the fall.
Yokohama’s skyline blinks by on your left. And though the scene leaves something to be desired as opposed to its nighttime counterpart, there’s a certain allure of seeing every shadow retreat beneath the daylight. You’re sure you could’ve come up with a better allegory had you not been freefalling.
Your back burns from the stubborn sunlight, and you grimace. Is this what Icarus saw on his way down?
Hang on, did Chuuya tell you how to land?
Shit.
An explosion erupts from the nearby deck. A cloud of smoke and dust rises above a meteor-sized hole. The ruckus attracts a growing mob of crewmen, and from within the wreckage, a familiar red silhouette glows.
Of course.
But if Chuuya provoked you into accepting his challenge to jump, then he must have trusted you to figure out the landing on your own. That didn’t mean he had to leave you to figure it out midair though. Knowing you can’t very well replicate his methods, you propel your brain into overdrive doing the only thing you know to do: think.
Your eyes scour the deck directly below for anything that could make your crash-landing any less conducive to certain death. Rows of stacked containers line up in Jenga pieces— but unfortunately metal isn’t known to be a very good cushion. A square of canvas is stretched across one corner— but there’s no knowing what lies underneath would be any more forgiving.
But there— directly under the crane is a massive acrylic tank. A tank of seawater and whatever fish has the misfortune of breaking your fall today.
As the ground rapidly approaches, you twist yourself to catch the eastward breeze, the wind now your dependable friend, towards the tank. Your boots jut out under you so that they reach the pool at an angle, your head barely saved from knocking against the edge of the tank.
In the instant before your feet make contact, your fingers curl and the water beneath your toes ices over like a freshly frozen lake, crackling downwards into the midsection of the tank. The thin layers disrupt just enough of the momentum to keep you from plunging straight below deck.
Once every sheet of ice is broken through, you summon your ability once again to transform the next layer of water into frozen slushy-like pellets, shattered ice that swallows the last of your descent, enough to prevent a very painful, final splat.
Whatever water remains slows your fall. The acrylic walls aren’t quite as resilient though. Definitely not.
In a devastating groan, the four walls of the tank explode, sending you skidding across the deck in a torrent of saltwater, seaweed and scales stuck to your face.
Every single bone in your body shudders from the impact, your hips and spine seeming to shoulder the brunt of the impact. When your hand reaches up to peel a slimy strand of seaweed away, it also pulls off blood seeping out of some wound from your forehead.
Miraculously, gravity decided you should live for the day.
Water sputters out as you make a haphazard attempt at standing. Your knees buckle putting one foot in front of the other, but unfortunately, you can’t blame the ship’s movement for your pitiful swaying.
Several monstrous fish thrash violently near your feet, nearly twice your armspan, their panicked eyes staring blankly at the sky as if wondering what they did to deserve this. The scattered seawater pools around your ankles, soaking right through your thermal leggings.
“The tuna! The bluefin tuna escaped!” a panicked voice approaches from the other end of the deck.
“You idiot, it was obviously the girl,” another voice snarls at him. “Forget the damn tuna. Shoot her!”
A round of artillery fire rings out. From the top of some containers, three cannons send a rain of shells straight down. But before they can reach their target, ice climbs in a wall in front of you like a barricade, halting the shells’ skyborne trajectory. Then the wall fractures into hundreds of scattered pieces, each ice-encased shell propelling backwards where they came from.
Cries sound from above where the three cannon-handlers now clutch at their bullet-ridden arms, blood spouting from the holes. Their weapons, too, lay in shattered segments around their feet.
Heavy footfalls thunder behind you. Six cleaver and machete-wielding burly men, who look like they weren’t very happy you’d interrupted their farming and fish-steaking routine, race across the deck. They only make it about halfway before you freeze their feet in place.
A frosted breath escapes your lips as you take in your surroundings. The six men are suspended in precarious positions, most just about to topple over themselves with their weapons raised high above their heads, knees coming up to their chests at the start of an attack sequence.
“You think a little ice will stop us?” One of the men growls, furiously picking at his shoe with the tip of his machete.
You ponder this briefly before giving a solemn nod. “You’re right. I should be more thorough.” With a flick of your wrist, the ice continues creeping up each body like a spiderweb, until every man is frozen up their midsection, arms bound.
The man who spoke is now immobilized in an awkward, bent-over position, his blade stuck to his shoe and hands, now shooting you futile glances.
You traverse between the row of frozen men like giant chess pieces, every deliberate footfall kicking up another smattering of snow into their faces. “You can still try to pry yourself free if you’d like.” You throw a glance over your shoulder. “Of course, it’ll be a bit difficult to fight me without skin on your feet.”
What you see in the distance makes you turn around entirely. Smoke billows out of a nearby ship that's been turned on its side, the entire front half submerged.
A short distance away is Chuuya's frenzied figure throwing punch after kick after punch at the onslaught of enemies surging at him on the deck. He promptly tosses them one after the other overboard, before deciding instead to sink the cargo containers with his gravity. Their increased weight causes the deck to groan in agony, and then collapse inwards, the containers punching straight through to the bottom. With the newly punctured holes in the ship, the vehicle quickly loses buoyancy and descends, seawater rising through the gaps.
Chuuya doesn't wait for it to sink before hopping over to the next one. But this time, he keeps himself levitated and brushes his hand across the hull. The ship begins floating, utterly devoid of gravity, helpless crewmen sliding down the sloped deck. And Chuuya, with all his love of combative spectacles, grabs the tip of the hull, balances the whole mass over his shoulder and bowls it into the sliver of space between the nearest two other ships. The resulting explosions erupt in perfect synchronization.
A flawless strike.
A flash of red.
A force of nature.
Conviction.
Wind whistles through the air as if applauding Chuuya’s efficiency. The worst part is, you would be too. You didn’t know when you started holding your breath, just that when you remember to inhale again, the motion makes your ribs rattle like a skewed xylophone.
It’s not until Chuuya leaps onto the next ship that a chill races across the back of your neck.
“Charge!”
In a single blink, your every side is surrounded by a motley crew of bedraggled men wielding fishing tools turned weapons. One ambushes you with a fishing spear and nearly takes your eye out before an ice dagger splinters it in half. Your foot stumbles back, giving another crew member the opportunity to bash the back of your head with a bat.
Stars dance in your vision as you fall backward, collapsing next to one of the unlucky tuna fish.
“Now how should we deal with you, Snow White?” jeers a hazy voice. “You prefer filleted, butterflied, steaked, or let me guess— since you’re all fancy you probably deserve sanmai oroshi?”
Not looking good.
The men creep closer to you, each hoisting their weapon of choice as if already revelling in the thought of cracking your skull open.
“You’re basically asking to get your ass handed to you.”
No. I am not proving him right.
One hand slams against the wooden deck and a flurry of ice races over the floor, but this time, in a thinner layer than the one you used to trap the machete-men. Just enough to immobilize your assailants while you regain purchase of the ground.
Unfortunately, these new constraints prove much easier to shake off. Within seconds, several men begin to approach you striking and thrusting through the air. Your heels tap against the deck and the new skates pop out with a click. For a harrowing moment, the deck lurches sideways beneath your feet. Then the floor rights itself with stark clarity, just in time for you to slide backwards and narrowly evade a knife to the throat.
Sasaki, you did it again.
A thin smile spreads across your face like blooming ice. You lean to the right, legs carving an arc through the makeshift rink, and manage to draw enough ice for a spear. Suddenly every knife slashes through empty air where you stood a single blink ago. All it takes is one lean, and you’re already sliding behind your opponent, whose demise is met with a swift stab through the heart.
But after the fourth swing, miss, and stab, you find yourself doubling over and clutching the space under your chest, completely winded.
Think. With the amount of water you have, you could manage to freeze and spear them three at a time, but in the corner of your eye, even more armed men hop over the containers to join the battle, and at that rate you’d be gutted just like that other man gloated.
Your eyes flicker to the men still frozen behind you, halfway encased in ice— a little overkill now that you thought about it more.
Don’t second guess.
You draw in a long breath despite the ache in your ribs, and summon all the water on deck back to you. The ice that previously held hostage the six men now races back to you in whirling wisps, gathering around your spear until it builds over the tip in a wicked curve. Out into a giant crystalline scythe.
And now that every one of your enemies is freed, they, naturally, charge at you all at once. You flick your wrist so the sharp edge of the scythe glistens in the ocean sunlight.
“Believe you’ve already won.”
With the remaining frost, you spin up miniature icicles and swing the scythe in a wide arc. The bodies nearest to you are sliced in half, straight down the midsection, while the ones in the outer ring bear gashes where the hail of icicles meet skin. Others were knocked out, felled by a bluefin tuna that slid away in the whirlwind.
The wind howls once again. A strand of hair flies into your eye.
The handle of the scythe rests on your shoulder as you kick away the tail of the nearest fish. “Sorry, not a huge fan of seafood,” you reply to no one in particular, brushing away your hair.
Fog rolls across the deck like the final curtain falling over these lost souls.
Their eulogy, however, is interrupted by a peculiar rumbling underfoot. Something rapidly approaches, but evades your gaze behind the shrouded mist.
A sharp whistle cuts through the air. An arc slashes at the space between your eyes.
But it fails to meet its target. A compact shield of ice blossoms across your wrist and parries the blade with a sharp crack. You don’t remember deciding to make it.
So this is what they mean when they say your ability acts before you do.
What water was used for its creation, though, is entirely lost to you.
The assailant, who appears no older than a teen, skids back and before he even recovered his footing, swipes his feet behind your knees then dashes away. Your wrists sorely break your fall before your chin hits the ground. A folded sheet of paper hangs out of his back pocket, faded inked lines running across the creases, a compass in the corner— and then he disappears into an open hatch below deck.
A map. That must be the route they planned to sail with the cargo.
You grit your teeth and don’t think twice before hopping into the hatch after him.
It takes a minute for your eyesight to adjust to the darkness, but once you make your way deeper inside, a familiar confidence settles into your joints. Narrow corridors, low ceilings, and rooms that needed no more than a few strides to cross all laid out in a labyrinthine network. Your shoulders relax, but the dagger gripped in your palm doesn’t.
Rustling echoes down the corridor and your pace quickens in pursuit. The youth from earlier conspires with an older man in a room lined with charts. When they catch sight of you, the bearded man whistles and soon, you’re joined by a small entourage of sailors brandishing an assortment of seafaring tools from sextants to compasses to hourglasses.
The ensuing fight— if you can call it that— took even less time than finding this room. Tremendously unremarkable, you think as you finish tying the last knot around the group of unconscious sailors. You clap the dust off your gloved hands, before swiping the map out of the kid’s pocket.
The only thing deterring you from engulfing the contents of the map right then and there is the dim lighting, forcing you to squint at the lines.
But when you return above deck, the sunlight exposes more than the cargo markings and shipping coordinates. Crimson pools march from the fallen bodies and collect around your boots, and the map goes limp in your hands.
Deadly silence poisons the air. The only sound comes from the flag snapping somewhere overhead and waves crashing against the hull of the ship you stood on. One of the six ships you were assigned to take care of. The remainder rapidly disappears over the horizon. Smoke plumes rise from the exhausts like a forsaken farewell.
Your gaze fixates on the line where the sea meets the sky. That oh-so-fragile line.
One ship. One of six.
The rest? Sand through your fingers.
Chuuya would never have let something like this happen.
The instant that thought finishes in your brain, your stomach flips with regret.
Because you know what they say: speak of the devil, and he shall land with a crater-sized crack in the deck. Right beside your motionless figure. The timing was so comical you would’ve laughed if all the air wasn’t knocked out of your lungs.
You catch him scanning the deck from your peripheral vision. But you don’t greet him.
“So,” he begins with a click of his tongue. Here it comes. “Why do you smell like sashimi?”
The words come out dry with an edge of displeasure, as if he were asking why his wine is room temperature.
The question lands so astronomically outside your realm of logic that you almost start laughing. You don’t.
Your words choke through a hard lump in your throat. “I landed in a fish tank.”
The toe of his shoe nudges the snout of a nearby fish. “That explains the tuna.”
“Doesn’t explain why you’re still on the same ship you landed on though.”
Of course he’d been watching. In fact he probably finished cleaning up his half so fast that he’d kicked his feet up on a lawnchair watching your struggle like a football match. You felt like one of the shipping containers he sunk to the ocean floor.
“No, it doesn’t,” is all you manage to croak out.
Your eyes are still cast into the far distance when he asks, “How many were on this ship?”
“Lost count after the ninth attack,” you mumble through half-parted lips, “around thirty if you count the non-combattants below.”
Somewhere behind you, Chuuya groans and taps his heels against the wood. “Hey, look at me,” he commands.
Your head doesn’t turn.
“I said,” he sucks in a breath and then barks, “look at me.”
Your feet stay rooted in place.
All that goes on in your head are the same thoughts running a circular groove through your brain. That kid wanted me to see the map. He kept checking to see I was following him through the corridor. He was baiting me. Buying time so the others could escape.
And I fell for it.
The mission objective was to secure the cargo ships. I won the battle but at what cost?
“For fuck’s sake, Y/n.” he eventually grumbles, the way he says your name striking you like a bullet that pulls you out of your loop. Then he trudges over to plant himself directly in front of you, blocking your view of the skyline. “What were you looking at?”
“The ships.”
“The ships,” he repeats, slower this time, tasting the word with the sea air. “What about them?”
“They got away.”
“So you’re aware. Good to know.”
Silence. What is there to say? Every excuse feels unfathomably pathetic to reach for.
“How many?” This morning’s same question makes your heart sink to your stomach.
“…Five.”
Surely he can do the math himself. But he made you say it anyway.
“Remind me, your ability uses water to manipulate ice, correct?”
“Yes.”
He throws a single glance on either side of him, and the wide, wide expanse of ocean surrounding your every direction. An infinite, immediate water source, wasted.
“You still think like you’re inside a box.”
Eventually, he realizes there isn’t another word he an get out of you today.
“Right,” he heaves a heavy sigh, and then balances a cigarette between his lips. “We’ll discuss this later.”
Somehow, what little he said was worse than any yell or lecture or insult you could’ve conceived.
The last thing you hear is the one, two clicks of a lighter. Then every one of your senses is consumed by the lull of rolling tides, crashing, crashing, crashing.
Chuuya’s footsteps disappear, your head submerged in water. He leaves you to stand in the middle of the ship, in a sea of eternal blue.
“I just grovel on the ground here
Like some kind of beast, thoughts darken
There's no way of knowing
When those darkened thoughts will break.
It's as if I'm drowning in the ocean
And can see the moon glowing overhead.”
.
.
.
The way home took much longer than Chuuya would’ve liked. His door opens with a slam that lands much harder than he intended it to, rattling the folders sitting on the nearby shelf. He throws his coat over the leather back of his office chair and slumps down.
Under the tip of his hat progressively falling further over his eyes, he traces the silver rays of moonlight crawling across his desk and the ashtray in the corner. His nose crinkles.
He’s always hated the way his office smelled after a mission.
Gunpowder, dried blood, ash, engine exhaust— all of them cling to his hair and always need more shampoo to wash out. This time, though, there’s a characteristic scent of seawater and… tuna.
“Tch,” slips out involuntarily.
The shadow of your crestfallen floats to mind like champagne bubbles against his will. His jaw tightens, grimace deepening.
“That’s what happens when you overobsess over the small shit,” he complains to no one in particular. His hand already reaches for the wine in his drawers. “I bet she’s next door overanalyzing the whole thing beginning to end. She’ll probably come up with some smartass excuse tomorrow.”
That’s what people like her do.
But as he brings the overflowing wine glass to his lips, his eyes darken, cerulean meeting burgundy.
She was oddly quiet at the end though.
The half-filled glass slams onto the oak table.
His door is closed, the stretching shadows in Chuuya’s office his only audience.
Nonetheless, he can’t help but curse under his breath.
“Damn investigative types.”
…
A/N: This chapter took exponentially longer to write because I had to work out a lot of the physics, so I apologize if it's still not realistically sound, bear with me 😅 It also took some time figuring out itself what I wanted to convey through every scene, and though I know it's a lot, I hope it'll all make sense in due time. This was the first time I've had to write y/n and chuuya conversing for longer periods and as much as i'd like to insert as much banter as I can and I'm still working on getting a handle on dialogue, I still have to prioritize character revelations and plot but hopefully it'll smooth out soon.
If you made this far, thank you for reading and I sincerely appreciate you sticking with me on this long, long journey <3
*The indented quotes are an except from irl Nakahara's poem titled "Lost Hope" that I got from @bsd-bibliophile
This chapter is part of my Chuuya x reader long-fic, so please make sure to read the previous parts first :)
Tags: chuuya x f!reader, slow burn (reallyyyy slow burn), partners to lovers, original female characters, focus on personal growth, angst, mystery, action, attempt at humour
Warnings: violence, swearing, psychological trauma, the usual bsd shenanigans
Chapter word count: 3.5k
Summary
"Already tainted by sorrow
Is a fox's splendid fur used for a coat
Already tainted by sorrow
Is the snowflake that shrinks before it falls"
You cannot make something out of nothing. This is the fundamental rule of your life.
Ice cannot be formed without water.
Trails cannot be followed without clues.
Hypotheses cannot be tested without evidence.
For ten years, everyone told you to give up the search for your parents, brilliant scientists who vanished from the criminal underworld in a fiery blaze, every shred of existence devoured. No addresses, no experiments, not even a surname to call home.
In pursuit of answers, you turn to the Port Mafia, for who would know more than Yokohama’s largest criminal organization?
But you are about to learn that what awaited after every question were not answers, but endless sprawling labyrinths— and Chuuya Nakahara, the man you are now expected to call your superior officer, with far too many opinions on how to do your job.
As the truth crackles through the icy surface and warmth threatens to melt long-frozen cores, you must confront a possibility shaking the very ground beneath your feet:
What do you do when what you’ve spent your life searching for doesn’t want to be found?
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3
Chapter 4 - Loose Screw
The Port Mafia is known to house a plethora of unimaginable dangers.
The guerilla attack force led by the Rabid Dog. The relentless terrors of the torture unit. The Black Lizard, whose every mission ends with brusque flashes of silver and then red.
But what many in the organization have yet to fear lurks midway between the 40-something floors of the main headquarters building, like a slumbering dragon, smoke seeping out of every perceivable corner.
This Monday morning, an unsuspecting elevator of late office workers learns this lesson. The rumbling box rolls onto the 17th floor with a ding. An anxious salaryman sticks his head out into the corridor just as an explosive bang sounds from the end of the hall. He retreats back inside, trembling hands clutched to either side of his head, his eyes flying to the other workers inside. A woman continues to apply her lipstick with a smack and adjusts her fringe when another explosion threatens to shake the lights off the ceiling.
“Hurry up and close the doors, won’t you? I swear these people are just kids pressing elevator buttons for fun,” she quips, snapping her handheld mirror shut.
The young salaryman’s face pales as the lift continues to rattle. “Shouldn’t we—”
“No.” The janitor reaches and presses the button over his crouched form.
“…No?”
“Weapons Research and Development,” replies the janitor with a shrug.
Just as the elevator doors are about to shut, a pair of overall-clad men hop inside, carrying the signature scent of gunpowder and electricity. In fact, a tendril of smoke trails from one of the men’s caps where a tiny flame resides on the very tip. He doesn’t even flinch when his stubbled partner puts out the fire between the fingers of his soot-stained glove.
The man catches the wide-eyed stare from the young salaryman and lets out a grumble. “Ya must be new here.”
As though he didn’t almost catch on fire, his friend bows to the increasingly impatient elevator occupants as the doors finally close, but not before the ear-splitting screech of metal on metal resounds down the corridor. “Sorry for the hold up, everyone.” He flashes an apologetic smile, oil-covered fingers scratching the back of his neck. “Sasaki’s in one of her moods again. She’ll figure it out soon.”
“Prototype exploded?” yawns the other mechanic, as if asking for the weather.
The capped man nods. “Sixth one this morning. Keeps saying it doesn’t have enough oomph.”
Even halfway up the floor, a sudden BOOM rocks the elevator on its ascent.
A shiver travels down the young worker’s spine as a horrifying realization dawns on him: if his chronic tardiness didn’t end up killing him, Research & Development almost certainly would.
(…)
“Sasaki!” you call as your outstretched hands part the curtains at the workshop entrance.
A thick cloud of smoke greets you on the other side, hands flying to your face to cover a sputtering cough. This wasn’t an unusual welcome. If anything, you preferred it to having a wrench thrown at you after having accidentally interrupted one of her rare “flows.”
Through bleary vision, you made a futile effort to disperse the smoke with frantic waves and could just catch sight of the familiar scraggly silhouette in front of you. But before you could choke out another greeting, the figure jumps below her workbench.
“DUCK!”
You immediately obey and throw your hands over your ears just in time for another explosive force to shake the four walls of the room.
When the sound subsides, a series of groans and metallic clinks follow in its wake. The unmistakable tinkering of a stubborn screwdriver already back to work. Steadily, you return to your feet and dust off the remnants of whatever the last disaster was off your coat sleeves.
Massive safety goggles disproportionately obscuring her face, the engineer doesn’t so much as glance at you as she continues fiddling with the rocket-shaped hazard sitting atop the bench. The left strap of her overalls hangs almost entirely off her figure, loose curls tied into uneven pigtails over her shoulders, dangling dangerously close to the prototype.
“If you’re also here to tell me to “work a little quieter,” no can do pal.” Two more screws fall away with a plink and she lifts the rectangular maintenance panel. “Eighth time’s the charm, I tell ya. Nine if you count the one that dissolved... But we don’t talk about that.”
The stern expression on your face melts off with a chuckle as you uncross your arms. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Sasaki.”
Said engineer glares up at you skeptically, twirling the screwdriver in her hand before pointing it straight to your neck. “Oh yeah? What are you here for then, Ms. Executive’s assistant?”
Holding out one hand in front of you in a placating gesture, the other slowly retrieves something from behind your back before dropping it onto the table with a soft crumple.
“I’d be careful who you’re calling assistant when I’m the one holding a peace offering.”
A tantalizing, sweet aroma cuts through the overbearing wafts of oil and sawdust in the air.
“Double chocolate hazelnut,” you announce, the corners of your eyes crinkling as you watch Sasaki dive into the brown paper bag with a grin, screwdriver abandoned by her side. Tiny indicator lights blink next to a tangle of wires beneath the exposed panel.
As the first cookie disappears in record time, you can’t help but laugh at the crumbs dusting over the scorch marks on Sasaki’s cheeks. “That’s totally what you are though,” she mutters between bites, “Second-in-command, assistant. Still the one carrying his paperwork.”
“What an odd way to say ‘thank you for feeding me, Y/n,’” you chide. Though as nonchalant as you tried to be, you didn’t miss the grumble her stomach let out upon seeing the bag. “Don’t tell me you missed breakfast again.”
Sasaki gulps down the last bite of her cookie before fishing for another one. Her eyebrow raises as if to prove a point. “This is breakfast.”
A drop of sweat beads on your forehead, partly due to the heat in the room. “Sasaki…” You warily eye the grease adorning her elbows, the several patches on her overalls and the increasingly concerning amount of hair slipping out of her pigtails. “How long have you been here?”
“Since Mori asked for a torpedo for our new submarine,” the engineer replies, dusting off the crumbs on her hands as she counts on her fingers. “There were pancakes in the cafeteria that day so… how long ago was Saturday?”
Even the half-eaten cup of instant ramen on the nearby stool appears sorry for her.
“Ah, I see,” is all you could say. Because really, what else is there to say? “So that’s what you’ve been working on all morning?”
“Well,” Sasaki mumbles, tugging at the wires inside the prototype with her screwdriver, your heart dropping with every casual poke, “just the explosive mechanism. The torpedo base was pretty easy to get down over the weekend. Boss says it needs to ‘disrupt enemy trajectory without endangering the passengers’ lives.’” She mimics his deep voice half-heartedly and sticks out a tongue.
“Something about needing to keep people alive for questioning— which, to me, is weird cuz, if you’re gonna ask for explosives, the bigger the better right?” A wholehearted laugh ricochets around the room, hands at her hips like a five-foot-nothing criminal mastermind, which you suppose is fitting for the Port Mafia’s lead engineer.
Suddenly, she sobers up and pulls down the goggles to sling around her neck. “That’s right. You don’t do interrogation anymore, do you?” She continues to ramble on, “Is your new boss still nagging at you for showing up late? I was surprised when you showed up last week requesting a mobility aid. The field must be pretty tough on you, huh?”
An awkward laugh slips out. “Tell me about it.” You slump onto the workbench, your fingers fiddling with a loose screw on the counter as you mumble. “I’ve managed to survive so far, but every time I’m out there I end up slipping. It’s embarrassing… eating shit on my own ability.”
A gloved hand briefly pats the top of your head, before Sasaki slips into the backdoor of the workshop, several screws fall out of the twenty-three pockets haphazardly sewn in random placements with each of her skips.
The door is enforced with a steel framework, “Authorized personnel only” written in bold on the front. You glance back at the curtain marking the front of the room, fireproof from the looks of it, though the bottom appears to be singed and torn along some edges. Whether the material was meant to be black or whether it was scorched that way by countless experiments, you had no idea. But didn’t it used to be a door?
A few minutes pass before shuffling footsteps return to the workbench. Something heavy drops right beside your head, startling you into standing upright again.
“I have to say, you sure gave me a lotta freedom on this one. All you asked for was optimized movement around the battlefield.” Sasaki gestures to the boots on the table— your black combat boots, the ones you wear on every job. “So the idea came to me when I was watching the Olympics the other night.”
One of the boots flips over in your hand and as you examine the sole, your thumb brushes over a recessed switch on the heel. With a click, a flash of silver pops out and glints under the workshop’s lights, the curved metal smiling up at you like a crescent moon.
Sasaki grins, the one she wears every time one of her new creations sees the light of day. “So I thought, since you manipulate ice and I know you like to freeze the floor— hell, why not skate across it?”
The boots suddenly feel too heavy in your hands, and yet you couldn’t bear to disappoint the triumphant smile on her face. “Thanks,” you swallow, “I’ll try them out on the next mission.”
“Oh no you won’t.” Sasaki’s smile drops as she snatches the boots, cradling them to her chest. “These are still a prototype. We still have to do a couple rounds of testing before I can approve them for official field-use.”
Poor Sasaki. She doesn’t have the slightest idea what to do when an exaggerated whine escapes, a frown marring your face as you flop back onto the desk. A handful of half-broken pencil tips poke you from underneath.
“Don’t make me go out there again please,” you continue to whine, bottom lip jutting out. “I can’t take any more of Executive Nakahara’s scrutiny. Like sorry, I’ve been behind a desk all of four years. I don’t know how to go about on-field jobs with him. Suddenly, I forget how to walk. I don’t stand properly. I ‘don’t act in a way that represents the Port Mafia.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Your stare burns holes into the palms of your gloved hands. “Where do I put my hands?
“He doesn’t tell me how to do any of it but he always has an opinion anyway!” You throw up your arms in defeat and slide further down the desk.
Sasaki chews the inside of her cheek and sets the boots down with a huff. When her hand reaches out again, you expect another pat but instead receive a hard flick to the forehead. “Please, your entire division would laugh if they saw you like this.” All she gives is a roll of her eyes seeing you nurse the sore spot on your head. “Ooh, the fearsome Arctic Harbinger is facing an identity crisis because somebody’s judging her work for once. Big deal.”
You shoot her a weak glare, until your eyes catch the discarded blueprints falling halfway over the nearby benches.
It’s easy to forget that someone as gung ho and loose-screwed as Sasaki still needs the approval of someone like the Port Mafia boss to keep working. Even easier to forget she didn’t simply spawn here and start whizzing away ever since.
She proceeds to pull on her goggles, pick up a soldering iron, and bury herself elbows deep into the prototype once again even as she scolds, “It’s like you forget you’re the stubborn investigator who raised hell to everyone who avoided your questions. Did the field take that away all of a sudden?”
Sparks fly under the lifted panel, the light catching in the reflections of the oversized circular goggles over her eyes. Your eyes tumble to your thumbs, strands of hair escaping your braid and falling into your face.
“You should see the kind of things I’ve been through the past few weeks,” you grumble, turning around so you can rest your elbows backward on the workbench. “First job I receive: handle a trade deal— turns out it flew up in flames and then I had to chase the perpetrators across the city rooftops during a rainstorm.”
“Sounds fun,” Sasaki replies without looking up.
“That wasn’t enough though. Then the rest of their organization kidnapped me on the way to work and tied me up in a basement.”
“Ohh, can’t say you’ve ever done that before.”
“No,” you laugh despite yourself, “can’t say I have.”
The memory returns, your face growing serious as you whirl around and slap a hand down on the table. “That reminds me!”
The sound makes Sasaki jump, hands dropping away from her project. “What did I say about sudden noises?” she bristles. “That could’ve exploded.”
A brief glance flickers to the prototype. “Not like that’s new.”
Before Sasaki can let out another complaint about workshop rules, you fish into your inner coat pocket and slam a square sheet of paper onto the desk. The dusty colors of the photographs can barely be made out in the light, and yet the three faces captured within stare up expectantly.
Her eyes widen for a suspended moment, before she takes off the glove of her left hand and picks up the photograph, squinting at it intently. “Is that… you?”
You nod silently as she buries her face in the photo. “The kidnappers kept a profile on me and managed to find this photo. Thing is, if my memory serves correctly— which it usually isn’t— this photo was from when I was eight. Back then—”
“The people behind you,” Sasaki interjects, her thumb hovering over the two other figures. A man and a woman dressed in ordinary civilian clothes. A wrinkled suit with a half-done tie and an unironed sundress. “Are these your parents?”
The word pelts your chest like a stone on a glass window. For years, that word was wielded to you like an unsheathed sword, or a carrot on a stick. But when you hear it from Sasaki, it feels weightless, ordinary, even.
“That’s the reasonable conclusion,” you relent.
Sasaki turns the photo sideways, left and then right, continuing to peer at it from different angles. “You have your mother’s eyes and your father’s chin,” she notes as if commenting on the horsepower of an engine. Then her voice softens, “…And you look really happy.”
She was right. It doesn’t take another genius scientist to make such an observation. In the center, your small frame was seated atop a stool, and a hand from either of your parents rested on your shoulders. You stared straight into the camera with a massive toothy grin. Back when all you had to lose were baby teeth.
“Isn’t that what children are supposed to look like?”
“Not the mafia’s children.”
The temperature in the room drops by a few degrees.
“I know a while ago I said I found some of their old experimental records— which turned out to be someone else’s— and that I thought I had a lead on their old lab, even though that was a dead end, but I really think I have a real clue this time and—”
“How long did you say you’ve been searching again?”
This was not the question you were expecting from Sasaki. It stops your ramble dead in your tracks. A sharp breath escapes your locked lungs. “Should be almost ten years now… God.”
The usual manic smile on the engineer’s face is replaced by something much more somber, more muted the more she looked at the photo. But try as you might, you can’t decipher the expression on her face, nor the estranged look in her eyes.
After what feels like a whole minute, a long breath drags out of Sasaki. “That’s a long time to be working on something that yields no results.” Her eyes drift to shelves of assorted gizmos and gadgets lining the room, many of which are caked by layers of dust.
Before you can reply (not that you knew how), Sasaki races to the opposite end of the room and retrieves what looks like a microscope, slamming it down on the workbench next to her tools.
“W-What are you doing?” You peer over her shoulder as Sasaki fiddles with the settings on the microscope, rotating the glass nosepieces until she finds one she seems happy with.
She merely furrows her brows at you before sliding the photograph onto the stage. “What does it look like, investigator? Studying your first real clue. Take a look.”
You are then shoved behind the instrument, your head directed to peer into the lens. The spot that Sasaki seemed to have focused on is the leftmost corner of the photo, where the previously fuzzy spot now makes out a white rectangular-looking box of several notches sitting atop a table, the lights reflecting on the nearby glass display.
“What am I looking at?” you ask, twisting the microscope knob to explore the rest of the photo.
“That—” Sasaki overrides your hands to return to the original spot. “—is an EEG, or an electroencephalogram amplifier. What did you say your parents' research was again?”
“Neuropsychology.”
“See now, that would make sense, except,” she pauses, turning the knob so that the photo is zoomed into something cropped out in the corner, “why is there a hospital bed right next to the EEG setup? And those cables are a lot longer than I’d expect. Unless they wanted the patient all the way over there.” Her brows knit. “Huh, I’ve never seen a setup like this before.”
You are only half-listening though. What really catches your attention is something on the opposite side of the frame.
“Don’t you think this shadow looks weird?”
Sasaki halts her lecture about experimental equipment to shoot you a curious look. “A shadow?” Now it’s your turn to swap seats with her. “I don’t get it. What’s weird about this?”
“I just…” you trail off, scratching your temple, “I don’t remember that being there when I last saw this photo.”
Sasaki spends several seconds zooming in and out of the photo, before she eventually plucks it out of the microscope. “I mean, you did say you were eight. You probably just forgot the details.”
You shake your head. “Maybe, but it feels strange. I’m getting the creeps looking at it.”
“It’s probably just the tripod, or a stack of books, or another one of these amplifiers.” Sasaki brushes a finger over the corner but the motion leaves a dark oil stain behind. “Ack— I’m so sorry.”
Your hand waves leisurely. “Don’t worry, that's just a copy. I wouldn’t bring the original artifact into… this room.”
“Fair point.”
The two of you fall into silence as you stare at the photograph in Sasaki’s hands. Unlike the carefree look on little-you’s face, your parents wore matching distant, sedate expressions. Something about their rigid postures made your stomach churn.
That’s when your phone’s ringtone echoes through the now-silent workshop. You scramble to flip it open and hold it to your ear when the order barks on the other end, “We’ve got a job. Meet up on the helipad on the roof.”
“Understood, sir,” you reply automatically at the sound of Chuuya’s voice. “I’m on my way.”
Sasaki looks at you inquisitively before you scoop the combat boots on the workbench into your arms.
“Thanks for this, Sasaki! I’ll leave you a detailed report ‘bout how they work when I’m done,” you call out over your shoulder.
“Wait, those haven’t been tested yet!” Sasaki yells, but much to her dismay, you’ve already disappeared behind the curtains. “Damn it, Y/n. Just don’t blame me if you die.”
She tugs one of her pigtails in frustration as she glances at the photo you left behind. A relic of the past she’s had to see you kill yourself over and over to hunt down. Now your infectious joyful smile stares up at her as if to prove a point.
An exasperated sigh escapes her lips as Sasaki returns the goggles over her eyes, the familiar ridged handle of the soldering iron back in her hands.
Tags: chuuya x f!reader, slow burn (reallyyyy slow burn), partners to lovers, original female characters, focus on personal growth, angst, mystery, action, attempt at humour
Warnings: violence, swearing, psychological trauma, the usual bsd shenanigans
Chapter word count: 7.1k
Summary
"Already tainted by sorrow
Is a fox's splendid fur used for a coat
Already tainted by sorrow
Is the snowflake that shrinks before it falls"
You cannot make something out of nothing. This is the fundamental rule of your life.
Ice cannot be formed without water.
Trails cannot be followed without clues.
Hypotheses cannot be tested without evidence.
For ten years, everyone told you to give up the search for your parents, brilliant scientists who vanished from the criminal underworld in a fiery blaze, every shred of existence devoured. No addresses, no experiments, not even a surname to call home.
In pursuit of answers, you turn to the Port Mafia, for who would know more than Yokohama’s largest criminal organization?
But you are about to learn that what awaited after every question were not answers, but endless sprawling labyrinths— and Chuuya Nakahara, the man you are now expected to call your superior officer, with far too many opinions on how to do your job.
As the truth crackles through the icy surface and warmth threatens to melt long-frozen cores, you must confront a possibility shaking the very ground beneath your feet:
What do you do when what you’ve spent your life searching for doesn’t want to be found?
Chapter 1, Chapter 2
Chapter 3 - Gremlin
Four years ago…
Before the Arctic Harbinger sowed snow under Executive Nakahara’s wings.
Chuuya Nakahara has no need for a partner.
Which was why the months following Dazai's defection from the Port Mafia saw the intelligence offices periodically ravaged by a tornado. Except the eye of this one was the farthest thing away from calm.
Said tornado repeatedly stomped the heel of his boot on the mahogany worktable in the center of the main intelligence bureau.
Amber overhead lights winked every so often as if to apologize for the state of the room. Rows upon rows of equally brown and dignified shelves rose floor to ceiling around the circumference of the room, each awaiting their turn for utter desecration.
This circular room was a manifestation of the criminal underworld’s wealth of information, the likes of which countless organizations would paint the town red in order to glimpse even a scrap from these archives. And now shreds of it lay around the main desk where a particular redhead huffed and puffed.
On this day, the tornado’s rampage yielded no more success than any of his previous ones, but that didn't stop him from tearing up another drawer and balling up its contents once several more skims proved useless. He tossed the paper balls one after the other onto the desk's surface until they rolled off to join the growing pile of disappointment on the floor.
If a Port Mafia member entered the room at this point, they would not be able to tell you what the floor was made of.
“How has nobody seen this slimy mackerel at all in the last month? These eyewitness statements are so fucking pathetic,” growled an increasingly frustrated 18-year-old Chuuya, who took it upon himself to give the poor mahogany grain another good boot-crushing. He proceeded to upend another drawer on his left.
“I don’t think Dazai would be hiding with the financial statements, Chuuya,” muttered a defeated Kouyou Ozaki, standing beside the table’s edge. Mori may have tasked her with keeping an eye on him, but nowhere did he instruct her to quell the storm in his mind’s eye.
Of course, Chuuya ignored her and kicked the obviously futile reports to the side. “He’s like a mythical beast. How does a person just fall off the face of the earth like that?”
Still, being the adult in the room means Kouyou must make a jab at decorum anyhow. “For your own good, Chuuya, I must insist you stop this nonsensical ransacking. This is most unbecoming of your recent promotion.”
The shiny new Executive title didn't stop him as he sent the remains of the month’s balance sheet raining over the room though.
The only thing Kouyou could do was sigh, hiding her pristine hands in the sleeves of her kimono. “You know better than anybody else here that you won't find Dazai unless he wants you to.”
He did. He knew all too well that this reminder was enough for him to drop his hands and slump down the accompanying chair. Whether his chest was heaving due to fury or exhaustion he didn’t want to think about. But now that he had sat, all the fatigue from recent sleepless nights bore down on him at once. And now, Chuuya was left fixating on a single hairline crack in the ceiling. Had that always been there?
“This place is a mess,” he eventually breathed out.
Kouyou shot him a deadpanned look. “You don’t say…”
“No, I mean,” Chuuya clicked his tongue, tugging at the ends of his hair that had started growing out, “the filing system is a complete mess. Why are January's reports mixed in with April’s? None of the recent intel have any digital backups, and our vendors have outdated contact information. What the hell’s happened to our intelligence unit?”
At this, the frustrated scowl on Kouyou’s face smoothed out to a pressed line. Her eyes shifted to the parts of the room that still lay miraculously untouched, but as Chuuya pointed out, were terribly unorganized.
Her tone dropped low and contemplative. “You would be right about that. That’s what happens when one of our Intelligence officers stabs us in the back and flees. You know, Mori always found it strange how Ango never entrusted the bureau to any subordinates.” She made a swift turn away from the desk. “Now we know why.”
The image of a traitor pricked at Chuuya’s core like a poison needle. But he nipped that thought in the bud before it got a chance to trail.
His feet kicked up onto the desk and shoved away any remaining stacks of paper. “Why’s Boss taking so long to find a new guy? At this rate, our intelligence brokers look like a damn joke.”
“He’s trying,” Kouyou clipped. “But every time he finds someone new, the archives gets robbed— a case file or a photograph binder or the latest mission reports. So naturally, Mori… takes care of them.” Her slender fingers traced the edge of the nearby shelf, leaving a trail through the dust. “The strangest part is, those same stolen files always reappear a few days later. Broken security cameras and collapsed guards to go with them.”
Chuuya raised an eyebrow at this but continued staring at the ceiling.
“Not traded to a rival syndicate. Not sold on the black market. Not used for blackmail against the Port Mafia.”
Kouyou’s heels clicked as she circled the room, matching the pace of Chuuya’s slowing breaths.
“But returned, usually in the wrong drawer but still, the information that left always found its way back.”
This made Chuuya perk up in his seat, his hat nearly falling over his eyes. “But, then we found who did it right?”
Kouyou lifted her fingers and flicked off the dust, disgust pulling down the corners of her lips. “No.”
“...You’re kidding.”
“Naturally, the only place they apparently haven’t reached yet,” said Kouyou, turning back to face the now stunned Chuuya, her draping sleeves sweeping out from either side of her, “is here. The main intelligence office.”
Chuuya’s brows furrowed, a familiar agitation setting in. “Great, so if we know where the thief is heading then Boss can catch them.” He relaxed against the back of the chair and crossed his arms. “So long as he doesn’t rope me into this. I’ve already got a bunch—”
Ringing interrupts him from the desk’s surface, the landline vibrating with its flashing red light as if to laugh at Chuuya’s luck. But then again, what choice did he have but to begrudgingly lift the phone to his ear.
Before he could utter a half-hearted greeting, Mori’s baritone voice cut through the static. “You have a guest, Chuuya.”
Chuuya’s hand immediately dragged down his face.
“Try to make sure she can still talk, alright?”
He rolled his eyes, landing on the spot where Kouyou stood a moment ago only to realise she vanished, the door locking into place behind her.
“Understood,” he grumbled into the phone.
“Excellent, I trust she’ll be in good hands!” and then the line ended with a click. Mori sounded way too chipper about an intruder in the building than Chuuya was comfortable with.
Chuuya slumped back into the chair and weighed his options. He could either stay and take care of another of Mori’s new playthings or he could leave and incur his wrath, thereby letting someone else take care of it.
But what was the fun in that? Shirking off his duties wasn’t a particular tendency of his (unlike a certain bandaged maniac), and he was itching to punch something other than office furniture. Though since Mori didn’t leave him any date and time, the implication was that it would be here and now.
But several minutes passed without so much as a cough from the nearby corridors, so Chuuya instead decided to continue turning the archives upside down.
Sleeves rolled up, he was elbows deep in another drawer when a rustling sounded from overhead. He paused, tracking the sound in the ceiling. Shuffling made its way to the left side of the room until the sound came from the vent just above his head…
He ripped the shaft grate free and thrust his arm into the opening, but turned up with nothing. The bolts clattered across the floor uselessly.
“Damn,” he cursed under his breath, “was it just a rat?”
But rats don’t move with such purpose. He dropped to the floor in a low squat.
Chuuya loosened the collar around his neck and scanned the room. There were exactly three vents in the circular room, one in the ceiling and two in the walls, beneath which none of the shelves stood to avoid condensation dripping.
Returning to the center of the room, he closed his eyes and focused. More movements sounded from behind the walls and ceiling where the room’s ventilation system ran.
But the rat didn’t make any sudden moves. If anything, it sounded like it was scurrying in the same loop through the walls. It just kept going, and going, and going in a circle with its incessant scuttling.
If there was anything Chuuya hated more than missing partners, it was waiting.
His eyes flew open. In an instant, he launched himself up with gravity manipulation and crouched against the ceiling. Any prying eyes through the vents wouldn’t catch sight of him from that angle. He then inched his way to a different vent in the wall, waited until the rat’s circuit should have passed that point, and drove a fist into the opening.
The grate blasted backward into the shaft with enough force to cave in a skull. But no impact followed.
The hairs on Chuuya's neck stood up in irritation. Peering inside was futile with the way darkness swallowed any useful information. Finally, he decided he’d had enough and lunged inside the duct.
Wherever the rat was, it must have changed its trajectory when it heard him coming. Not that he was making any particular attempts at stealth. His head bumped against the top of the duct and he let out an irritated hiss.
“Where did it go?” Chuuya groaned, the echo mocking him through the labyrinthine passages. But it was only when his whole body was wedged inside the shaft that he clocked the temperature drop.
His fingers ran across the narrow walls with a frosty bite, coming up with a loose smattering of snow. In fact, if he squinted, he could make out a trail of this snow-like creation glistening down into the depths of the dark corridor.
So he did what any persistent hunter did and followed the trail, even if it meant snaking with his belly flat through an air duct.
The longer he crawled the more he realised the path of snow was getting thicker and colder; this was a fresh trail then. Either the rat was growing sloppy or it was leading him somewhere.
Chuuya craned his neck to look behind him but could barely catch sight of anything past his hips. It was too late to turn back anyhow. A chill ran down his spine despite an attempt to suppress it.
The next bend led him to the right, sloping downwards into a passage that compressed him into an even smaller path. His hand reached out for the next stretch of open passage but collided with a solid wall—
Strange. This route should have continued. He felt around the obstruction. But instead of the familiar smoothness of metal, this surface was cold, solid, coarse in some places, and crumbled damply beneath his fingertips.
Chuuya blinked for a few moments in the darkness. He’d lost track of where he should be relative to the room after the fifth bend. And now he was shoulders first in an air duct in the building of an organization he was supposed to command. He was stuck, and a block of ice stood in his way.
“...You little shit,” he seethed. It only took about half a millisecond for him to decide his next course of action.
Naturally, it was to gravity-punch the frozen obstacle, sending this whole section of the ventilation system blowing away with it.
The next thing he knew, Chuuya was falling through the ceiling in a corner of the intelligence office and took part of the lights with him. He caught himself with gravity just before making impact with the floor, coughing from the debris threatening to choke his lungs.
Through the dust, his eyes darted around the room and expected half of the shelves to be bare or toppled over after the thief had fled, but all he found was a figure crouching on the other side next to a row of filing cabinets.
The nearest book was the unlucky projectile Chuuya sent flying toward the figure, but it knocked against something with a crunch and fell a short distance away from his target. When the dust settled, he spotted the curve of ice separating the thief from the rest of the room.
“Hah, got you now,” he jeered, cracking his fingers.
But the thief didn’t respond. Actually, now that he was stepping closer, he could make out the rat’s appearance: a girl no older than a teenager in drab clothing, soot on her face, practically waist deep in one of the drawers.
And you weren’t giving him the time of day. Light reflected off your frozen enclosure with a glare.
Chuuya frowned. “Ya know you’re trapped right? Fat chance you’re making it out of this one.”
You simply gave him a sidelong glance and tossed a folder over your shoulder that you apparently deemed worthless.
“HEY.” He jabbed a finger into the ice wall. “Don’t you know who you’re talking to?”
At this, you only sighed with a heave of your shoulders, before settling down cross-legged on the floor with an open file. “Unfortunately.”
“Unfortunately?” Chuuya could hear himself screeching, though he didn’t care. “Keep talking shit and I’ll show you exactly who I am.”
You turned a page, eyes glued to the file in your lap. “Alotta talk coming from someone who just got promoted two weeks ago.”
A vein popped on his forehead. “What did you say to me?”
“I hope property damage is covered in your expense reports,” you said, waving a hand dismissively.
Chuuya couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Here lay an obviously trapped target, who clearly had a thought-out plan before managing to sneak into the heart of the most dangerous criminal organization in the city. You were practically defenseless, reading classified documents without a care in the world as if he had just interrupted your afternoon tea.
Obsessive, calculating, unafraid of evident danger. He’d had enough of dealing with those types for one lifetime.
“That’s it.”
The floor groaned, a crater forming around him. Then he launched himself forward, kicking the ice wall into a million flying shards. Just in time for you to catch a particularly interesting line in the file. Your eyes lingered on it briefly before a smile tugged at your lips.
You stuffed the file into your shirt and narrowly twisted aside just as Chuuya’s boot slammed into the wall where you leaned against just a heartbeat ago.
He straightened himself, a crease forming between his brows when he grunted, “None of that’s public info yet. Knowing that should’ve gotten you killed already.”
But when he turned to you again, he found that you were already rummaging through a shelf on the opposite side of the room. And you had the audacity to groan every time you flung another book away.
"Did you have to destroy the room this badly?” Another stack of papers flew to the ground. “This is exactly why I planned not to run into you…”
Chuuya’s eye twitched. Once. Twice. And then he hurled a chair in your direction.
“Scientists… research… accidents…,” you muttered to yourself as you continued flipping pages.
But you looked up too late. By the time the folder closed in your hands, the chair barrelled into your right leg, sending you veering to the side into a nearby cabinet.
“Ow…” you groaned, examining the file that fell on top of you with growing interest. “Hang on, this might be useful.” It was shoved under your arm next to the other file. “Well, guess this’ll have to do today.” You swept a rueful glance over the room.
“There won’t be another day, you rat.” Chuuya spun on his heel and began full pursuit. He was done playing.
The two of you leapt across the desks and shelves like a violent parody of a dance. Chuuya kept throwing swings. You narrowly dodged while the ache in your calf throbbed with every landing. His gloved fingertips grazed the back of your neck just before you were able to duck and use the last bit of water in your reserve to lock his foot in place. The offset balance nearly threw Chuuya over the top of a cabinet.
It took him exactly one second to break out of this hold. But this one second bought just enough time for you to jump into the open vent in the ceiling.
The last look you exchanged with him was filled with pure, undiluted rage. You made the executive decision not to smile back before disappearing into the shaft.
“Right.” A crack of his neck. “We're doing this then.”
Chuuya eyed the spot where you vanished momentarily before bursting through the double doors of the bureau. He’d learned his lesson about air ducts one too many times that afternoon.
His phone snapped open and he brought it to his ear. “Requesting backup. Head towards the southern vents on the second floor.” And then he was off sprinting through the halls, alerting curious onlookers with their newly gathered intel piled high in stacks.
Tracking you this time was a lot easier, the shafts above sounded like there was a boulder running through them, bumping and colliding into every corner with unceremonious grunts.
Chuuya smirked as he kept pace underneath your movements. The fact of the matter was this little scuffle was over the moment you fled the room. This entire building was his, and no matter how long you might have spent staring at maps or studying passageways, Chuuya would have passed the building’s every shadow a thousand times.
That was why he knew the path you were going down would lead to a dead end right about… now.
He reached the end of a corridor, but walls never really meant anything for Chuuya, who now scaled it sideways and tore a hole through the ceiling where the ducts ceased. Just as he predicted, you fell through the height of the hallways and landed, much to your dismay, on your right knee.
“How’s that plan working out for you? “Not to run into me?”” He glowered down at you who now hunched over the collapsed remains of the ceiling.
To his surprise, you were still breathing, gasps escaping through gritted teeth. “So much for that right?” you winced at the tremor going up your leg.
He crouched down to meet you at eye-level, grabbing onto the back of your collar like one would catch a stray dog. “You coulda made this easier for both of us if you just gave up, ya know?”
It was at this point he noticed you were staring— no, more like boring into his eyes, the unkempt ends of your bangs cutting through your intense gaze. He wasn’t prepared for the awkward silence to spill over, so he just sighed.
Chuuya felt you twist within his grasp, ready to counter any punch or kick you might throw, but what he didn’t brace for was your hand sweeping across his face. “Good thinking, save your voice for when Boss— AH.”
A spray of freezing pin needles drove into his eyelids, and soon he was falling backwards clutching at the skin over his eyes.
When he looked up again, he found you already dashing down the corridor, a prominent limp disrupting your strides. But there was nothing in your hands, nothing you could’ve used to—
His fingers came away encrusted with frosted ruby, and that was when he noticed the blood dripping from a cut in his left eyebrow. Turns out the freefall through the archive ceiling didn’t leave him unscathed after all.
Through the haze in his watery, stinging vision, he could only stare at his hands. Did she just… use my own blood to stab me in the eyes?
“What a fucking gremlin,” was the only swear Chuuya gave himself time for before hurrying down the same path.
A flash of your blouse disappeared behind the next corner, and that was when he exchanged nods with Kouyou passing by the intersecting hallway. It wouldn’t be long now.
He turned the same corner, and found you racing into the left corridor. When he followed again, you turned right.
Finally, when he rounded the last bend, he was face-to-face with a billion-dollar sight that made this whole godforsaken chase worth it: you writhing inside Golden Demon’s grasp, katana pressed close to your neck.
Kouyou stood a short distance away, eyeing you curiously over the sleeve of her kimono. “I have to say, that took you longer than expected, Chuuya.”
Chuuya prickled like an agitated cat. “You’re not the one who had to deal with frozen vents and needles.”
The chill arrived with the sound of his footsteps.
“Now, what do we have here?” A lilting voice slipped into the hallway. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, rat in the walls.”
Mori flashed a wicked smile, colder than any construct you had thrown thus far, his hands clasped behind his back.
You said nothing, only continuing to struggle inside Golden Demon’s hold. Meanwhile, one of the phantom’s hands reached around you and pulled out the files tucked inside your shirt, and then dropped them into Mori’s hands.
“We’ll be taking these back now. Though I suspect you would have returned them later once you realize these aren’t what you were looking for.” He dusted off the corners of the folders as if you had contaminated them. “I have to say, I’m rather impressed you made it this far. Too bad your search ends here… oh?”
Golden Demon gave you another pat down, and extracted the small notepad sticking outside of your back pocket, before passing it to Mori. Dread flooded your eyes and you gave another shake under her hold, but this only led to your neck pricked, blood seeping onto the phantom’s sword.
Mori dangled the notepad between two fingers and tilted his head. With the other files under his arm, he flipped through your pages of scrawling handwriting with frightening speed. His violet eyes caught a spark that Chuuya could have recognized in his worst nightmares.
“Very interesting,” he remarked. Another flip. Another page turned. “I expected the usual: guard routes, a map of the ventilation system, security camera locations, but this…”
Curiosity got the better of Chuuya, and now he was craning his neck to catch glimpses over Mori’s shoulder. Page after worn page were crammed top to bottom with near illegible scribbles. But through it he was able to just barely read what looked to be ‘timeline of staff changes,’ ‘potential endangered trade deals,’ ‘theories behind missing persons.’ Mori shut the notepad with a thoughtful hum.
The sound struck Chuuya like a discordant note. A cold sweat prickled the back of his neck.
“If you don’t have anywhere to be,” Mori started leisurely as if he were speaking to a neighbor on the street, “perhaps you could join me for a cup of tea.”
And then he swiveled away from the three of you. As Mori’s doctor’s coat flapped behind him, a peculiar unease lodged between Chuuya’s ribs.
Chuuya raised an eyebrow at Kouyou as if to ask What the hell just happened, to which Kouyou could only reply with a shrug, before releasing you onto the ground, Golden Demon pinning your arms pinned you.
Whatever Boss was thinking, a singular thought cemented itself inside Chuuya’s mind:
This was not good.
(…)
The day’s final rays dappled through half-drawn blinds with a periwinkle shadow, stretching across the elongated oak table where you sat, stiffer than the folder the Port Mafia boss tapped against his knuckle.
Unlike the intelligence bureau, this man’s office had window panes along an entire wall, exposing any shadow that may have taken refuge inside. The room looked like the quintessential dark academic offices that jumped straight out of your old textbooks. It housed the must of grainy wood from its furnishings as well as the characteristic scent of ink from the open pot sitting in front of him. Unfinished documents lay abandoned in the midsection of the table, and on the other end, the boss smiled with that calculating, deeply unsettling glint in his eyes.
You weren’t sure if it was because of the immaculate whiteness of the lab coat he adorned, but you could have sworn there was the faintest trace of antiseptic hanging in the air.
But there was little room for you to probe that thought further, what with the warm steam of black tea wafting into your nostrils from the cup beneath you.
You stared into the surface of the tea as if it would give you the answers you almost lost your neck for, but only your sullen gaze returned. Your hands, now bruised and bloodied, remained folded in your lap.
“Not a fan of black tea?” asked the man with the slick black hair. His elbows rested on the table, chin propped up on his hands.
The auburn-haired woman with the elegant updo gave him a sidelong glance, her sleeve concealing the lower half of her face.
This woman may have been the one whose phantom sword dug into your neck, but the chill that ran down your spine every time you looked at the man told you he was the one you should be keeping your eye on.
You gulped in spite of yourself, and pushed the porcelain cup away. “You poisoned this,” you said matter-of-factly, like noting that the sun was setting.
“Oh?” The man gave you an inquisitive tilt of his head, his indigo eyes swum with shadows that appeared even darker in the faded sunlight. To your surprise, he scoffed. “How pedestrian. To think I’d use such dull old tricks.”
He took a sip of tea from his cup. Tea that you noted was poured from the same pot right in front of you. Then he dabbeed the corner of his mouth with a napkin with all the manners of a nobleman.
After setting it down, he asked, “You think I would poison myself?”
This merely earned him a squint of your eyes. “I don’t know nearly enough about you to draw any conclusions.”
The woman beside him took a long, relaxed sip from her cup as well, complete with a raised pinkie, then added, “She has a point there, Ougai.”
A chuckle tumbled out of the man as he made a “fair enough” gesture with his arms. The laughter was still in his voice when he returned to you. “You’d be right about that. Where are my manners? My name is Ougai Mori, leader of the Port Mafia.” He gestured to the notepad sitting complacently next to his tea cup. “But I assume you knew that already.”
Moments passed in silence while you merely stared at him, hands never leaving your lap.
Eventually, Mori asked, “And you are?”
At which point, you had already counted every possible exit strategy out of this room, none of which involved you keeping your head. So you relented, shoulders slumped ever so slightly, “Y/N.”
Mori raised an eyebrow at this. “Y/N what?”
Several more heartbeats passed, but you didn’t wait for him to ask again. Your shoulders slumped further. Through clenched teeth, you replied, “I don’t know.”
The man smiled at this, which you were now realising was a sign of many bad things to come, like a crow circling overhead.
“Interesting,” was all he said, before propping on his glasses and opening the laptop to his right.
The next few minutes were occupied by Mori looking back and forth between the notepad and laptop, swift fingers interchanging between scrolling, typing, and turning the pages of your notepad. Meanwhile, occasional clinks of tea cup against saucer interrupted this sequence, the woman ignoring whatever scheme her boss was concocting.
Finally, Mori looked up with a pleased smile on his face and removed his glasses before setting them down on the table.
“Shimizu.”
Your back stiffened, head snapping up. “What?”
“Your surname. And who you’re looking for.” He smirked. “They were quite the infamous researchers back when I was an aspiring mafioso, but then they vanished after a lab accident. Isn’t that right?”
Your heart felt like it would cave in on itself and collapse into your stomach.
“H-How did you know I was searching for my fam—”
“Ah you see,” Mori began and arced his hand in front of him, a sweeping gesture that you felt referenced not just the room you were in, but everything that you saw and knew, “That’s the difference between you and me.”
His hands were on your notes again. “You spend months, judging by your work, collecting information, swiping files and photos from our shelves, crawling through our vents.” He flips a page, and then another. “It’s quite frankly rather commendable, how in depth it all is.” Another turned page, but this time, the corner tore the slightest bit from where he grasped. You winced.
He quirked an eyebrow at your reaction, then continued, “And yet…” His hands steepled in a perfect triangle. “All I have to do is make a couple of clicks,” he demonstrates by turning the laptop around to face you, “and the answer is at my fingertips.”
Breathing felt helpless at this moment. The cruiser on the screen blinked like the countdown of your demise. And yet, one thought prevailed over all your dread: I need to get into this man’s archive.
“Don’t torture the poor girl, Ougai.” The woman set her tea cup down with a decisive clink. “So you discovered she was orphaned. It’s bad enough you’re gloating about it too.”
“Now, Kouyou, all I’m doing is complimenting her.” The familiar wicked smile crept back on his face. “Indeed, this is exceptional work for a one woman operation. Might I ask, from where did you collect such… extensive information?”
“People talk,” was all you said. But clearly this wasn’t satisfactory enough for Mori. He kept his firm gaze on you like a scalpel at your throat until you continued, “The orphanage gets a lot of kids from sketchy neighborhoods. They talk a lot about black markets and what they hear from information brokers and stuff. Doesn’t take a lot of digging to know the name “Port Mafia” comes up a lot.”
“But all these theories about missing personnel and private staff changes…”
Your arms crossed over your chest defensively. “Any ordinary street rat could piece it all together.”
He paused. An odd upward tilt slipped into his voice when he asked, “How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“How long?”
“Excuse me?”
“The time you spent gathering information.”
“Oh.” Your head dropped, staring into the cuts and callouses on your knuckles. You hadn’t really thought about that question before, and couldn’t keep the sullenness from seeping into your voice. “…Two years.”
Something crackled behind his dark gaze, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards.
The woman named Kouyou furrowed her brows at this and gave Mori a scrutinizing glare. “No. You’re not.”
The look Mori shot her was full of indignation, a gasp slipping out. “You see the problem as plainly as I, don’t you, Kouyou? This girl here knows far too much.”
Her red eyeliner looked sharp enough to kill a man, the way Kouyou continued to pierce him.
“Heavens know what would happen to us if another organization got their hands on her. If they gave her proper resources, a database, a real record keeper…” He drained the last of his tea. “We could find ourselves facing off with a mastermind investigator within months.”
An uncomfortable silence settled in the space between you.
“That is to say, she’s not making it out of this room.”
The gash at your neck felt like it would spill over again with the slightest breath.
Then again, that seemed to be exactly what he wanted.
Kouyou’s sleeve dropped to the table, revealing the crimson curve of her lips in a resolute line. And then she smiled ever so slightly, like the falling of a flower petal, and closed her eyes as if in defeat.
“Disposing of her now would be a splendid waste of talent,” she said in a velvet voice, “if she wanted to profit off of a rival organization by now, she would have. If wanted to ruin us by now, she could have. If it were riches she was after, she could have robbed us blind before our next breaths. But no, it was information she broke in for… information about her parents.”
Her cherry red eyes glistened in the rising moonlight and locked with yours. “Instead, the girl silences our guards one by one, freezes our security cameras, pockets evidence and makes it in and out of headquarters alive without so much as a whisper. For months, might I add. She even managed to evade our dear Chuuya for quite some time. You’re going to tell me you’re willing to snuff out a budding sprout just like that?”
Mori shrugged helplessly, his fingers once again laced in front of him. “What else would you have me do? She’s clearly far too dangerous to continue letting run around.”
“The solution is simple.” Kouyou slipped her hands out of her sleeves and rested them on the table. “We give her a place to foster these talents. Perhaps not in the intelligence unit— the sorry sight that it is right now— but I think you would fit rather nicely in interrogation with me, wouldn’t you say, dear? You’re free to keep searching so long as you fulfil your assignments.”
You said nothing, your throat suddenly so parched you wished you had accepted that tea, poison or not. Wasn’t this woman about to slice you in half not an hour ago?
“Well, if you insist, dearest Kouyou,” Mori hummed languidly, then poured himself another cup. “She’s all yours.”
All you could do was look between the two, apparently the most dangerous figures in the mafia and wonder what the hell got you into this. Whatever it was, it seemed your life was just spared by the razor’s edge.
Kouyou was walking halfway across the table towards you as you were still processing what just occurred. And then when you blinked again she was already at your side, the wound at your neck pulsing with every quickening breath.
Her hands lifted closer to you, and you instinctively braced yourself, for knuckles across your cheek, a kick to the gut, or even a quick slash to finish off what was started, but nothing happened. Though you didn’t realize when you shut them, your eyes peaked open slowly.
The last thing you expected were soft hands in your hair, delicately brushing aside the tangled strands. Although she was occasionally interrupted by a stubborn knot, the woman continued to patiently tug and fiddle with the hair beside your ear. Every brush of her fingers against your skin sent goosebumps rising all over.
“What… are you doing?” you asked tentatively, still subconsciously anticipating a blade to materialize out of nowhere.
Instead, when you looked at the auburn-haired woman’s face again, all you saw was a look of concentration, tinged with something else you couldn’t quite place.
“Hold still, darling.” Her hands parted a section of your hair to one side, and that was when you caught the flash of scarlet slipping between her. “You see, it’s tradition in the Port Mafia that whoever is recruited would receive… a gift of sorts.”
Finished, she gave a satisfied smile and was about to pass you a handmirror, when Mori suddenly called out, “You may enter now, Chuuya.”
The door burst open with a slam, the hinges rattling in place.
“WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED HERE.”
The redhead pointed an accusatory finger at you, his chest heaving so hard you swore you could see smoke pouring out of his ears. His azure gaze landed squarely on you.
“AND WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”
“I was just about to ask the same thing…” you mumbled, trying desperately to shrink into your chair.
Chuuya marched into the room. “Boss.” He stomped closer to Mori’s chair. “Boss.” And then his feet rooted aggressively beside the table. “You’re not seriously hiring this vent rat, are you?”
Mori simply chuckled. “And why ever not?”
“She nearly took my eyes out.”
“Precisely. Isn’t she remarkably talented?” He gestured to you as if displaying his latest work of art. “Someone like her was practically made for the mafia.”
Now that you took a closer look, you could spot the redness creeping in from the edges of Chuuya’s eyes, stray tears still prickling the inner corners. You almost had to stifle a laugh watching him twitch with anger.
“Meet our newest interrogator,” Mori said in between sips of tea, “this is Y/N Shimi—”
“Just Y/N is fine,” you interrupted before you could stop yourself.
The teacup paused halfway to Mori’s lips, a smirk slipping on. “Is that so?”
“Who gives a damn? She’s still the vent rat who stabbed me in the eyes,” Chuuya quipped as he shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Now, Chuuya, since you’re showing such a keen interest in our new recruit here, why don’t you show her around headquarters? Especially the torture and interrogation floor where she’ll be stationed. I’m sure the place will look much different when you’re walking through it rather than crawling,” Mori finished with a sip of his tea.
Chuuya’s jaw was hanging wide open. His finger pointed back between you and Kouyou who still stood behind you. “Oh hell no, don’t tell me she’s under your wing now.”
You looked up to find a sincere smile adorning Kouyou’s flawless face. Something fragile twisted inside your chest when she said, “Of course. Don’t you think this ribbon rather suits her?”
Kouyou held the mirror up in front of you. Whatever you were about to say next got stuck in your throat when you saw it: the scarlet bow. A narrow braid traced its way from your temple to the ribbon resting beside your ear. She had tied your bangs back so you were no longer looking at the world through frayed edges. You examined the neatness of the plait transformed out of your disheveled hair, but your eyes kept returning to the red.
Chuuya’s arm dropped loosely at his side. Only the words, “you betrayed me” tumbled out of his mouth as he turned back to face the door.
Then he straightened up and planted his hands to his hips decisively. “You heard the boss,” he muttered, “come on before I shove you back down the vents myself.”
Kouyou looked at you expectantly, and then you were up and out of your chair with an awkward shuffle, trailing behind the hotheaded executive who was now apparently your senior.
“Actually, I know how to get there that way,” you somehow felt the need to point out.
“Of course you do,” Chuuya grunted and clicked his tongue, then he trudged to the door with you in tow. “Damn it, did it have to be Kouyou of all people?”
Your head titled at this. “I don’t understand. Aren’t you both of equal status? Why are you acting like you have a say over her?”
“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY,” Chuuya’s fist was raised midway as you two passed through the doorway.
The door shut behind you, but Chuuya’s voice could still be heard inside the room. It sounded hesitant when he noted, ““Someone like you was made for the mafia,” huh? Do you know who the last person was that he said that to?”
Your reply was only confusion, “I don’t understand.”
Chuuya sighed heavily and his voice carried off further down the hallway. “Oh forget it. Just make sure you don’t come anywhere near me.”
“But what if my work happens to cross over with yours?”
And that was the last either Mori or Kouyou heard of Chuuya’s grumbling and explosive insults before both your voices faded away.
Immediately, the smile dropped from Kouyou’s face.
“You knew.”
“I’m sorry?” Mori asked, far too innocently for a man of his station.
Kouyou’s heels clicked closer to the table, the slanted shadow that fell sliced half her face in darkness. “You knew you would never dispose of an asset that useful.”
“Hmm.”
“But you made it sound like I wanted her.”
“Didn’t you?”
Kouyou paused at this, her hands returning inside her sleeves. “The point is that you did. So why not just recruit her outright?”
Mori swirled the tea in his cup. “I could never keep that obsessive orphan caged for long.” He stopped, then stared down at the last remnants of his drink settling at the bottom. “But let the door swing open and she’ll feel like she was never in one to begin with.”
Somehow, Kouyou felt that she would regret asking, but she did anyway, “Meaning what exactly?”
The notepad yawned open in front of him, turned to the very last page. The blank, untouched final page of a years-long obsession. Mori smiled down at it before shutting the notepad closed.
“She’ll believe the sky is hers.”
(…)
Your office holds a peculiar pocket of warmth in the fading twilight. The scent of lavender lingers in your hair from a recent shower, water droplets hitting the surface of your desk in succession.
One hand brushes along the ends of a scarlet bow pinned as a broach beneath your neck. The other hand holds a photograph you hadn’t seen since the last time someone did your hair, many unmoored moons ago. How it ended up in those kidnappers’ clutches you don’t yet know.
Back then you thought getting your foot through the Port Mafia’s doors would bring you closer to finding answers. Little did you know your search had barely just begun.
Tags: chuuya x f!reader, slow burn (reallyyyy slow burn), partners to lovers, original female characters, focus on personal growth, angst, mystery, action, attempt at humour
Warnings: violence, swearing, psychological trauma, the usual bsd shenanigans
Chapter word count: 4.4k
Summary
"Already tainted by sorrow
Is a fox's splendid fur used for a coat.
Already tainted by sorrow
Is the snowflake that shrinks before it falls"
You cannot make something out of nothing. This is the fundamental rule of your life.
Ice cannot be formed without water.
Trails cannot be followed without clues.
Hypotheses cannot be tested without evidence.
For ten years, everyone told you to give up the search for your parents, brilliant scientists who vanished from the criminal underworld in a fiery blaze, every shred of existence devoured. No addresses, no experiments, not even a surname to call home.
In pursuit of answers, you turn to the Port Mafia, for who would know more than Yokohama’s largest criminal organization?
But you are about to learn that what awaited after every question were not answers, but endless sprawling labyrinths— and Chuuya Nakahara, the man you are now expected to call your superior officer, with far too many opinions on how to do your job.
As the truth crackles through the icy surface and warmth threatens to melt long-frozen cores, you must confront a possibility shaking the very ground beneath your feet:
What do you do when what you’ve spent your life searching for doesn’t want to be found?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2 - The Arctic Harbinger
Alarms are utterly useless.
Is what you concluded this morning after missing the eighth one in a row. At this point the snooze button is a mere suggestion, a morning ritual you can perform in your sleep as easily as snoring.
You never needed any back when the only thing calling your name was a desk and the occasional stack of paperwork. It hardly mattered when you arrived at HQ when the only things on your schedule were:
Perform maintenance of the torture chamber at 12:00.
Interrogate this new gang at 14:30.
Submit evidence of said interrogation at 18:00.
And then the rest of the day was free to chase whatever dead ends or daydreams you happened to stumble across.
But now it’s Chuuya’s constant “Y/N, where’s the report from last night? Hang on, there were supposed to be three of them,” “Come to the conference with me and take meeting notes. I don’t care that it’s four hours long,” and “What do you mean the coffee machine’s broken again? Why is it always broken when I need it?” usually followed by another stack of folders cluttering the desk you had only just organized.
“Should just make those my alarms instead. I’d never go back to sleep,” you grumble, shifting your briefcase from one hand to the other.
The crowd of pedestrians forces you to stop at the zebra crossing. You eye the growing number of other late workers with a chew of your lips. Might as well make bets on what today’s lecture is gonna be.
But you take this brief pause to rub your elbow, an annoyed sigh escaping as you recount the events of the last rooftop mission. You haven't been sent to the field at all since then, but your bruises still leave sore, mildly discoloured spots under your sleeves and make the morning commutes all the more gruelling.
It’s bad enough that one mission from this new division left you battered and bruised for weeks, but dealing with Chuuya’s daily morning nag really rubs salt in the wound.
The signal turns green, and you whine, “Somebody take me away from this please.”
But just as you start to make the crossing, a white van stops and opens in front of you, revealing half a dozen men crammed in. One of them grabs your collar and hauls you inside like a sack of potatoes. Before you even had a chance to complain about the utter lack of courtesy, a starburst of pain erupts across your temple.
Your last thought before everything went dark was At least I won’t get scolded this morning.
…
Tuesday’s sun is too bright in Chuuya’s office when somebody raps on his door. Whoever it is is knocking too insistently. It is too early for this. And the hangover cure Chuuya swiped from Kouyou’s kitchen is working much too slow for his liking.
“What is it?” relents Chuuya.
“Executive Nakahara, sir,” the junior operative exclaims, practically bursting into the room.
Chuuya looks up from his latest stack of case files with a crease between his brows.
“It’s Y/N, sir.”
He immediately relaxes and goes back to reading. “Did she finally submit the meeting notes from yesterday’s conference?”
“She hasn’t clocked in to work yet, sir. It’s been two hours.”
A dismissive wave of his hand. “She’ll be fine.”
The operative stands in the doorway with his mouth slightly agape, stuttering, “But she’s still a new recruit, sir. Shouldn’t we go look for her?”
The folders snap closed in Chuuya’s hands, and he sighs. “New to our division maybe. But take it from me, two hours is nothing for her.” He then fishes a cigarette from his coat lining and sticks it in his mouth. “She’s fine.”
“I-If you say so, sir.”
…
If the dull thudding behind your eyes wasn’t enough to rouse you, then the stagnant odor threatening to suffocate you is.
Your eyes fly open and the first thing you notice is that your face is rubbing against a coarse stone floor and facing a wall of peeling, grey paint. Tracing the thin cracks upwards reveals flecks of mold growing out of every hapless corner. Through the incessant ringing in your ears, you can just make out the distant glugging of water moving through a sewage pipe within the building.
Somewhere overhead, a leaky pipe chokes and sputters droplets of dank water onto the concrete floor.
No light flows in from your position. Though you imagine if there were any, it would be too caked in grime to betray much information.
And judging by the stale stench in the air, I must be in some kind of basement.
Trying to right yourself only results in defiant shakes of metal where your arms stay pinned behind your back. The more you resist, the worse the burning sensation around your wrists and ankles.
But eventually, you manage to pivot the weight on your palms, the skin scraped raw, and flip over.
“Ow,” you groan upon awkwardly landing on your chin. So much for a graceful introduction.
And with your luck, you immediately lock eyes with a suited man watching with immense amusement, as if he’d just channel surfed to his favourite show. He sits wide-legged on a wooden crate with a sheaf of papers in one hand.
A dark chuckle. A puff of smoke. And then the six men surrounding him in a semi-circle perk up as if awakened by the snarky sound.
The energy in the room shifts.
With whatever movement you can still muster, you slowly sit upright with your knees tucked under you.
“Sleep well?” the one you can only presume to be the leader asks languidly, taking a leisure draw of his cigar. Under the shadows falling over the crate, you can just about identify the stylized sea creature painted over the wood.
One you recall seeing on a certain helicopter from a certain rooftop. So that’s where those idiots came from.
“Marvelously,” you reply with as much dryness as your chapped lips. “I have to say, if Blue Whale Trading Corp. wanted a meeting with me so badly, you could’ve just sent an email.”
The man says nothing but continues to watch. Only smooths down his long black hair with a comb.
“I mean really. First you cut off our trade. Then you order your men to attack the Port Mafia’s emissary.”
The staccato click of his heels make its way towards you.
“And now a kidnapping? Talk about a lack of protocol.”
A pair of black oxford shoes stop just before your knees, so matte that the light from the lightbulbs above fail to reflect on them.
The man throws his head back, and a dry laugh fills the cramped room. You could swear a few of his men shivered.
“You’re just as they say,” he says in a voice calloused from too many smokes. “Cold and brittle as the weapons you command.”
Only a blank stare answers him back.
“As much as I hate to admit it, you do make a point.” The man’s voice is casual, as if you’d just inconvenienced his afternoon tea. His hands draw out one of the articles he was reading with a crack, in the corner houses the same blue whale logo. “Now, let’s talk about why that’s a fair trade.
“Six weeks ago. End of the first quarter. You captured three of my men and hauled them into that freezer you call The Tundra.”
Still, not a word leaves you.
“Any recollection?”
You merely shrug, commenting. “We get many prisoners in the interrogation department.”
“Of course,” he continues, “they killed themselves before you could pry any information with your shrewd hands.”
At this, you click your tongue in annoyance. “That’s right. I went through all that work stalking them and bringing them back alive, only for them to die on me before I could get anything useful.”
With growing amusement, the leader flips to the next page and presents it to you. “You’re not the only one who can perform a thorough investigation, Miss Y/N.” Your headshot appears in the corner, the one with the same distinctive scowl you wore every time you were asked for a photo, and a list of bullet points underneath.
As the man talks, your sweaty fingers feel around your belt, under your coat, and in your pockets, but turn up with nothing. The knit of your brows do not go by him unnoticed.
“Oh, looking for this?” A snap of his fingers, and then one of the nearby men shuffle forward and drop something into his leader’s free hand. Suddenly, his voice drops the distinctly corporate tone, cynicism creeps in. “Don’t think we don’t know all about you, ice user.”
He holds the item out in front of you like a fisherman showing off his latest catch: the water pouch you brought along for missions. “Your ability is useless without water to manipulate. Take a look around. Do you see any around here?” His arms spread on either side of him. “Sorry for not being a very good host, but I’m afraid we won’t be offering you a drink with your stay.”
The situation was so absurd you could almost laugh if not for the pain in your side. Getting kidnapped on your way to work is not on any of your bingo cards.
All at once the humour leaves you. This man with his outdated sense of style and fondness for flair may be incredibly tacky, but he is prepared. And he is right about something for once.
“So you did some snooping about me,” you retort with a roll of your eyes. “Big deal, you did your homework.”
Frowning at your plain reaction, the man tosses the pouch behind him for one of his unlucky subordinates to catch. “You seem pretty relaxed for someone who oughta start drafting your final words.” A gun that was previously kept at his side now spins around his finger. He then points it down the center of your eyes. “How about you get a sense of how Yuto and Naoki felt staring down their deaths a fortnight ago.”
A short distance above, a naked lightbulb flashes on in the dim basement. Oh.
The leader watches curiously as surprise lights up your eyes. “You… remember their names?”
Whatever the man was expecting, it was not this. Frustrated, he shoves the barrel of his gun into your forehead, a cursed clicking sound follows. “Of course I remember their names.”
‘Boss couldn’t care if we died.’
“They were my only ability users, and you killed them!”
Ah.
A disappointed sigh escapes. Despite better judgement, you still found yourself retaliating, “What did you think would happen when you decided to steal from the Port Ma—”
The back of a calloused hand strikes your cheek. For a single blink you sat there dazed, then spit out the blood pooling in your mouth to the side. Still, it does little to quiet the trembling in your lips.
“It’s time you got a taste of your own treatment.”
For all your prior bravado, you truly are not cut out for the field.
“So you’re here for revenge…,” you say quietly.
A beat.
And then silence, like a wave retreating back into the ocean.
A lump forms in your throat and begins to choke your words, “Please, don’t kill me.”
Finally, the leader’s face eases as he lets out another satisfied laugh, this time retracting his gun. “Smart girl,” he says, the business-casual tone slipping back in, “we’re not letting you have the easy way out that fast.”
…
The frustrated mafia operative paces down the hall, blankly staring at his assignment sheets when a concerned coworker taps him on the shoulder.
“Hey man, what’s got you all worried?”
“It’s Executive Nakahara. He’d asked me to show Y/n the ropes around here since he “didn’t wanna do it himself.” Now she’s been missing for half the day and he looks like he couldn’t care less!” He throws his hands up in exasperation.
His friend only releases a chuckle and slaps his back repeatedly. “If the exec thinks that’s the call to make then you should quit worrying.”
“What do you mean?” The operative finally looks up from his papers and raises an eyebrow at this. “She’s only been out on the field once here. How can he be so confident?”
This grants him a look of surprise from his comrade. “Haven’t you heard?”
“Heard what…?”
At this, a cold sweat forms on his friend’s forehead. “Nevermind,” he says hastily, “just ask somebody from interrogation.”
“Ask them what?”
“Actually, don’t.”
And then he hurries down the hall.
The operative grabs him by the arm before he could make the quick escape. “You can’t just leave it at that and run away!”
His comrade throws a cautionary glance around the empty corridor and leans down to whisper in his ear conspiratorily. “Executive Nakahara doesn’t like hearing this name, but back in interrogation, they called her ‘The Arctic Harbinger.’”
All this earns him is a clueless stare.
“They say wherever she walks, a trail of frost follows in her wake.”
…
“No, you don’t understand.” You bite your bruised lip, your cheek still stinging from the slap, as tears begin to collect around your eyes. “You have to let me go!” A firm rattle shakes the chains attached to your wrists. “I-I can’t be left here to die.”
Snickers and snorts go around the room like an echo chamber. Shoulders flex and knuckles crack with exaggerated popping sounds.
The leader shares a triumphant look between his men and returns to you with a smirk playing at his thin lips. “Hey now, you won’t be much use to us dead, would you? We should have our fun bleeding you dry for all you’re worth first.” A shrug of his shoulders, and he says, “Then we’ll parade your bedazzled corpse to headquarters for the whole gang to see.”
A breath hitches in your throat. “Please—” Tears begin to pour from your eyes. “You can’t do that!” Steady streams flow down your cheeks, down your arms, and collect in the well of your palms held out behind you.
A round of laughter is shared among the men.
A frantic cry and then, “You can’t let my boss see me like this!”
The laughter dies, each pair of eyes now glaring daggers at you.
“What did you just say?” The leader asks in disbelief.
Another racking sob tears through your body, more tears pooling at your chin and dribbling down your frame. “If he found out how pathetic I was— captured and killed by a bunch of nobodies—”
“Hey lady, you better watch your mouth—”
“—HE’LL NEVER LET ME HEAR THE END OF IT.” Your body rocks to the side with another tearful wail, blinking rapidly.
“Oi, think you’re focusing on the wrong thing here.” The cigar falls from his mouth, before being crushed beneath the man’s toes. The gun cocks, pointed at you once again. “We’re the one about to blow your head off, in case you forgot.”
He gestures for two of his men to move in on you, their grubby hands reaching for your chains. Little did they know about the cloud of frost currently collecting around your clutches.
Just a little more.
“NO! You don’t get it.” You squeeze your eyes shut, letting more water drip and collect in your hands. “You can only kill me once,” you start, opening them again just in time to catch his absolute dumbfounded expression when you say, “but my boss and his fancy hat will scold my soul here and into the afterlife. He’ll—”
“Enough of this nonsense,” he growls.
Bang.
The gun smokes, and you surprisingly find yourself unharmed. The bullet, now burrowed into the wall behind you, narrowly missed your head.
“Grab her and bring her to the torture chamber upstairs,” he barks, stomping on his heeled oxfords and storming to the exit.
Crackle.
This causes the man to pause, throwing a reluctant glance over his shoulder.
Snap.
One chain link splits in half, ice splintering where it falls, one after another.
Before he can even blink, the two men he just ordered are now clutching their sides. They groan, blood splattering from their mouths and through the cracks in their fingers.
His eyes dart around for a weapon. A knife you swiped from one of the men. A shard of glass somebody left behind and neglected to clean up.
But he only finds the icicles extending from your fingertips, laced in a deep crimson.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to lay your hands on a lady without her permission.”
And in the dimming light, the shine from the lone lightbulb glints off your almost maniacal smile.
A single finger drags across a fresh trail of tears across your cheek. Slowly, deadly, it extends longer and higher until it reaches the room’s low ceiling.
The ceiling where the busted pipe drips, drips, drips onto the dry floor.
“By the way,” you drawl, relishing the panic that registers on the man’s face, “you guys should really do some maintenance around here.
In a flash of silver, the pipe slices in half. The remnants of the city’s sewage sprinkles down over the entire room.
What happens next is sheer chaos.
The four men left standing all charge at once, weapons in hand.
A bald man with a pistol takes aim at you, but before he can pull the trigger, another axe-wielding man dashes forward. He slips on a frozen patch of ice and loses his footing, coming down on the bald man with a swing of his axe. The arm holding the gun slices clean off and the bald man falls back with a shriek.
With a throw of your arm, you freeze the scrawny man hoisting a rusty pipe over his head before he can take another step. Just in time to dash back when somebody else with a katana slashes at the spot you stood just a moment ago.
Unfortunately for him, he was the one who was holding onto your water pouch, where it now hung at his hip. And in his frantic slashing, he accidentally left a tear in the bag which you catch a glimpse of.
Perfect.
The man charges forward to make another lunge, but finds his entire right leg frozen to the ground from the hip. He curses momentarily before ice engulfed the rest of his being.
Two beats of quiet pass until you let yourself exhale, suddenly finding a knit in the side of your stomach.
Unfortunately that quiet didn’t last long. Heavy footsteps approach behind you. Moving ice slides you away from the swing of an axe before you could get chopped in half like a magician’s final trick.
Shit, forgot this one was still alive.
You stand panting a short distance away, an ice dagger forming in your hands in time to meet the man’s next axe attacks. The two of you continue to exchange blows, every dagger you create breaks instantly upon contact and soon you find yourself quickly running out of stamina.
Just when you thought you ran out of luck, you leap away at the last swing the man brought to the floor. But he never lifts it back up.
He simply stands there in his hunched over position, his face going slack just before he sinks to the wet floor.
Copper mixes with the odor of sewage water, the stench borderline unbearable.
When you manage to tear your gaze away from the corpse, your eyes land on the leader whose feet are frozen in place by the doorway. His trembling hands around a smoking gun that drops to the floor.
Terrible aim, I guess.
“Now,” you cough, wrenching the rusty pipe from his subordinate’s frozen body and pointing it towards the leader, “Start talking. Why did you have your men steal the goods instead of just honoring the trade?”
The man looks at you as if you had just asked the world’s dumbest question. “Profit, of course.”
A scowl steals over your face. You shove the pipe to his neck until choking sounds spill out of him. “Are you aware that your men— your ability users—” you quote him with disgust in your voice, “died for you?”
He simply scoffs, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards, then states, “That’s why you and I are here.”
You push the pipe down harder. “That’s not what I meant. Is there even a little bit of care that all these men lost their lives over your orders?”
“I mean, true that ability users are expensive to recruit around here, but I figured those jewels could buy me at least ten more of them.” The man looks to the side as if he were actively doing the computations in his head. “A worthy trade-off if you ask me.”
You don’t even remember thinking when you brought the pipe down on him, shattering the left side of his body that was frozen over. The man doubles over and lets out a pained groan.
“I don’t know what repulses me more: the fact that that’s your takeaway from this situation or that you let your men here do all the fighting for you,” you spit out, gesturing at the room.
But the man can no longer answer you. He lays squirming on the floor with his eyes closed.
The only thing you can do now is sigh, resting the pipe over a shoulder, until your eyes catch sight of the pile of papers he was brandishing earlier. You pick them up and just barely manage to freeze them into a bundle together before they wash away in pieces down the drain.
“Ahh damn it, I never learned how to drive a van.”
…
Orange rays of dusk filter through the Port Mafia corridors where Chuuya is signing papers a subordinate holds out for him. For reasons unbeknownst to the poor worker, Chuuya has been extra irritable the whole day, a frown permanently creasing his lips.
Eventually he says, “Dock today’s hours.”
“Sir?”
“If Y/N wants to disappear for a whole day on my watch, she can explain it to payroll herself,” he snorts, finishing off the last signature with an unnecessary stab. “Kouyou may have let it slide but I sure as hell won’t.”
The worker can only let a nervous trickle of sweat slip down her forehead, and then she scrambles down the hallway.
Chuuya starts making his way down too, but is interrupted by Higuchi halfway down.
The concerned Higuchi, already aware of his growing disgruntled state, asks softly, “It’s already six o’clock. Do you think she’ll show up?”
And this flips a lid on Chuuya, naturally. “WHAT DO I CARE? DOES IT LOOK LIKE I GIVE A DAMN. IF SHE DARES TO COME BACK NOW I’LL…”
He doesn’t even notice when Higuchi slips away in the middle of his rage, defeated riddled in her face. Hirotsu appears behind her and clasps a reassuring hand over her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. He would’ve flipped out no matter what you said,” he sighs. “She’ll come back eventually.”
As if summoned, a dinging sounds at the opportune moment Chuuya happens to be stomping right in front of the elevator. So lucky for you, he is the first to greet you when the elevator door opens and you walk in dragging three frozen bodies by the ankles.
Immediately, Chuuya stops yelling and regains his composure. A snarky grin plays at his face as he crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, look who the cat finally decided to drag in.”
“Good evening,” you return, weariness plaguing your voice.
“Do you have any idea what time it is—” and then it hits him. Chuuya slaps a hand over his nose. “WHAT IS THAT SMELL?”
Somewhere behind him, Higuchi wrinkles her nose and Hirotsu hides behind a handkerchief.
“Um… the sewage?”
“And what is the sewage doing in the middle of headquarters?” Chuuya’s eyes twitch.
You just give him your best shrug with three unconscious bodies under your arms. “I brought evidence?” You offer up as if that might grant you his mercy. You should have known better.
“What you brought is a biohazard.” He points at the bodies, and then at the dripping wet floor trailing behind you. “Don’t tell me you dragged them through the whole building. Just where the hell did you run off to this time?”
“In my defense, it wasn’t my fault this time.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Chuuya visibly looks on the brink of exploding.
You blink, and then, “They kidnapped me.”
For a full second, it feels like the whole floor stopped moving. Even Chuuya stops flailing around and sobers up.
Eventually he just says, “What?”
When you finish revisiting the timeline of your day, he can only stand there with his mouth hanging open. “So that’s where you were…?”
Gently, you set the bodies down on the floor so you can stretch out your arms. “Yeah so, I figured they could tell us more about the little stunt they pulled the other day, you know the trade cut-off, and the other nitty-gritties of their organisation.”
A yawn slips out before you turn to him, serious as if your life depended on it now, and say, “So, this counts as working right? You won’t deduct today from my timesheet will you?”
Once again, it appears you set Chuuya flying into another rage. “Is that seriously what you’re worried about right now?”
Higuchi and the poor worker from earlier poke their heads over the side of the corridor.
“God, you look like you just crawled out of the sewer.” His gloved fingers still plug his nose.
“But I basically did—”
“I DON’T CARE.” He tosses you a rag from a nearby cleaning cart. “Go take a shower. Take a look at yourself for fuck’s sake.”
You glance down at your bearing, surprised. For the first time, you notice your teared-up leggings, your scraped coat, and undone braid housing a collection of sticks and leaves. Flecks of dried blood and leftover ice still hang from the loose threads and jagged cuts.
"The hell kind of impression do you think you're making walking around like that?" and so begins the rant.
“You are just unbelievable. No clients would wanna meet with you like this. I can’t believe you’d show up like this in front of me. Just what do you think of the standards we have around here…”
But you don’t hear the rest of his lecture.
A photo slips out of the files under your arms and stares up at you. A photo you thought you would never see again.
Tags: chuuya x f!reader, slow burn (reallyyyy slow burn), partners to lovers, original female characters, focus on personal growth, angst, mystery, attempt at humour
Warnings: violence, swearing, psychological trauma, the usual bsd shenanigans
Chapter word count: 2.9k
Summary
"Already tainted by sorrow
Is a fox's splendid fur used for a coat.
Already tainted by sorrow
Is the snowflake that shrinks before it falls"
You cannot make something out of nothing. This is the fundamental rule of your life.
Ice cannot be formed without water.
Trails cannot be followed without clues.
Hypotheses cannot be tested without evidence.
For ten years, everyone told you to give up the search for your parents, brilliant scientists who vanished from the criminal underworld in a fiery blaze, every shred of existence devoured. No addresses, no experiments, not even a surname to call home.
In pursuit of answers, you turn to the Port Mafia, for who would know more than Yokohama’s largest criminal organization?
But you are about to learn that what awaited after every question were not answers, but endless sprawling labyrinths— and Chuuya Nakahara, the man you are now expected to call your superior officer, with far too many opinions on how to do your job.
As the truth crackles through the icy surface and warmth threatens to melt long-frozen cores, you must confront a possibility shaking the very ground beneath your feet:
What do you do when what you’ve spent your life searching for doesn’t want to be found?
Chapter 1 - A Lone Windchime
“Again, this evening ancient rain
Is singing the same ancient song”
A lone windchime slips a single, desperate note into the raging downpour. A nameless melody snuffed out as quickly as it was born, swallowed by the lashing chorus over Yokohama's concrete landscape. Yet there’s a rumbling underway; you can smell it in the air: the smoky crescendo of thunder, low and nigh-imperceptible to those who don’t heed its call.
A conductor high and mighty waves his invisible baton to command the cascade. Sheets of rain descend to suffocate all who dare interrupt its orchestral surge, but even they part a way for your rooftop pursuit, crackling in tune to the lightning beneath your quickening footsteps.
Somewhere in the storm, someone unfortunate’s final countdown begins in tandem with the falling raindrops. What a shame, the storm they sought shelter in isn’t nearly merciful enough to hide them forever.
Unfortunately, the Port Mafia taught you better. The line between predator and prey becomes a tightrope you dance upon with the changing winds. Mere roles to fill as easily as switching out hats.
These lessons haven’t failed you yet; there, a flicker in the corner of your eye. Lightning flashes overhead as if on cue. Your practiced ears catch the distinct gasping breaths of deer in headlights.
In the haze, for one blinking moment, the looming silhouette of a helicopter on a nearby roof comes into view. And with it, the two deer scrambling with the guilty goods that gave way to this chase.
Two more for this hunter’s collection then.
“Can’t you load the cargo any faster,” an impatient voice calls from the cockpit of the helicopter, his small head swiveling around. “Damn it, I can’t see anything like this.”
A couple more leaps bring you closer into view of the scene before you. A muscular-looking man hauls a dozen boxes marked with the Port Mafia’s insignia into the trunk. He ignores his partner, pausing instead to inspect one of the stolen jewels in the dim moonlight, whistling. “Think boss’ll notice if a few of these beauties go missing?”
The smaller man lets out a cynical laugh that disappears in the furious storm as if to prove his point: “Boss couldn’t care if we died.” And then he stops abruptly. In the blink of an eye the box that was just in his partner’s hand teleported and swapped places with a rifle that was previously sitting next to him. “Soon as the cargo reaches him, we’re nothin’ but expendable dogs. But this mutt would at least like to keep his head ‘till then.”
Meanwhile you creep forward slowly, surreptitiously under the cover of the heavy rain until they are within a good enough distance for you to vaguely make out their expressions.
Once the muscular man lifts the final box into the luggage compartment with an exaggerated grunt, a strangely victorious grin steals across his face. “Might as well make sure we get somethin’ outta it first then, shouldn’t we?”
All fools meet the same unfortunate ends it seems.
Your disappointed sigh crystallizes the raindrops near your face. You watch for a few brief moments as the bulky man scrambles into the cockpit, and then,
“What the— why's the control stick frozen?!”
In a rage, he twists the stick around so abruptly that it snaps clean off, causing the smaller one to shriek. The burly man scrambles out of the cockpit, leaving his teleporter friend behind, and dives into one of the back compartments. “Damn it, where's the replacement stick?”
“Special Ability: Forsaken Snowscape.”
The teleporter never even got a chance to scream. When the bigger man turned back, he was face-to-face with his partner’s pale face frozen along with the whole front half of the helicopter, his arm outstretched as if to try something again.
“Looks like he won't be pulling that trick again,” your voice carries across the wind with the same chill.
The muscular man immediately adopts a combative stance, the instincts of a fighter who had to earn his right to live too many times. “Who the hell are you? Did those mafia dogs send you?” His voice is gruff, yet couldn't hide the panic blossoming underneath.
You scowl, frost flurrying around your combat boots with every step you take. “Dogs, don’t make me laugh… I only see one of us barking here.” You flex your gloved hand in front of you, slick in the rain, and beckon towards the stolen crates. “Tell me again, what was it you planned to do with the mafia’s goods over there?”
Your next step lands in a stomp that sends a circle of ice erupting across the entire rooftop. The next thing the man knew, his lower half was trapped in the spot where he stood, no more mobile than a house plant.
You could've smirked, but not before your target let out a heavy grunt, his body hardening into a stone-like material starting from his arms. Arms as tough and jagged as unpolished diamonds punch through the ice chaining his feet. And you were lucky enough to propel yourself backward with an ice rush before any of the shards grazed your skin.
“So the mafia finally sends their ice user to the field. To what do I owe this pleasure?” A laugh escapes his lips in an icy cloud, an almost maniacal grin igniting his face. “What, got tired of keeping you in the refrigerator?”
“Very creative,” you mutter under your breath and untie the belt around your frock coat. Looks like you’ll need to expend more energy than you anticipated.
Your opponent lunges forward in a powerful frontal assault, nearly catching your chin before you dodged to the left. He tries again knowing what to expect, this time changing his momentum in the last second so that when you flip backwards, his hardened fists collide with your shins. But not before you were able to freeze that area to reduce the impact.
You land disgracefully on bruised knees, the muscles on your legs smarting from the force. When you try to stand up again, your foot slips on the ice and reignites the same painful spot on your knee.
Much to your dismay, he’s right. Your instincts may have given you the speed to catch the thieves, but lack of practical experience means you have little idea what to do once you are actually here. Time to think of a different approach.
“It’d be easier for both of us if you stayed on your knees, princess,” he chuckled.
“Hold still for a moment, would you?” The sincere politeness in your voice almost catches him off-guard.
“What do you—”
His foot catches an uneven spot of ice and he trips chin-first into the ground. Before he gets a chance to regain his composure, you swing your arms down in swift intersecting arcs that commands the nearby rain to collect in growing shards of ice around the bulky man’s body. Pinning his arms to his sides, he can no longer rely on his upper body for momentum to break the hold.
Soon, the ice covered every inch of his body except for his head, leaving barely enough room for him to breathe and, “Speak.” You stand over him, your eyes staring icicles down his eerily calm gaze, almost as if he were in a trance. “Don’t have many other options anyway.”
He doesn’t answer, so you continue, “Let’s get this straight. Your organization sends you to handle a trade with the Port Mafia. A trade that would require at least a box truck to transport all the goods yet you and your partner show up with nothing but 2 motorcycles to the warehouse. We meet inside the warehouse, you sign the contracts, we hand over our goods but when it came to your end of the deal… the next thing we know, you vanish.” You snap your gloved fingers for emphasis. “You disappear with the Port Mafia’s prized jewels that took 3 months of import to haul in from halfway across the world. That’s not very good business practice, is it?”
A crystalline spear starts forming in your hands, reaching down until it stops just before the man’s beefy neck. “Even your friend here knows it. If these people can’t even hold their end of the deal with the most feared criminal organization in the world, who’s to say they won’t let a few expendable henchmen die? Why stick your neck out for them?” His lips stay sealed for so long you wonder where you accidentally froze them too. You tighten the grip of the ice on his body until he lets out a wheeze.
“There’s only one ending for the fools who cross the port mafia, and even you’re not dumb enough to need to think about what that is.” The rain is becoming unbearably cold now. It seeps into your coat and your braided hair and your thermal leggings that you may as well be wearing none at all. And you hate it more with each second this idiot stalls. “So tell me, why did you do it, why defy us? Why do you live like this?”
The man simply sighs. A long, sordid sound that echoes inside the ice chamber surrounding him. “There’s nothin’ left for me. These damn jewels make the deal a touch sweeter though.” A tinkering follows as a couple of jewels fall onto the ice.
“You’re willing to throw your life away for a couple of rocks?” Your voice was rising now, threatening to crack the ice under your control. “Is your life so cheap that you would give it up just like that?”
One final time, the man scoffs and closes his eyes. “Yeah, good riddance.”
But just as you are about to deal the final blow, a red gleam emerges from above followed quickly by the crushing weight of gravity. Your eyes close from the force of the wind, and when you open them again, you find a familiar hat and coat-wearing silhouette standing on top of the very spot your target last lay, his back towards you.
“Tch,” Chuuya grunts and steps off the remains of body, dusting off the ice and debris from his coat as if he just walked off a cruise. “Took you long enough.”
Your spear falls and shatters into a million bits skidding between the fallen jewels.
“Look who finally decided to drop in.” You point an accusatory finger at him. “If I’d arrived any later, both our targets and the gemstones you spent months importing would be halfway across the ocean right about now.”
Chuuya merely grumbles and kicks a nearby pile of ice, his hands in his pockets. “Jeez, you’re gonna make clean-up such a headache.”
You could only blink at him incredulously and place your hands on your hips. “I don’t hear a thank you for handling the situation.”
“Like hell ya handled it,” snipes Chuuya. He finally makes the effort to turn around and face you, just so he can give you a good staredown. “Did you have a good chat with your buddy here? A nice long talk so you can set aside your differences and make the world a better place?”
The condescension is enough to make your skin want to set itself on fire. Begrudgingly, you look away first and instead focus on some moving shadows to your left.
“I only asked him one question,” you mutter under your breath.
“Which is?”
“...Why he did it.”
“Not this again.” Chuuya pinches the bridge of his nose and gives you a disapproving stare. “Oi, look at me.”
You do as he says.
“You understand, Y/N, that you don’t have a desk to hide behind anymore. You can’t go around chasing criminals with “Why?” questions. Nobody cares for why. And you would save a hell of a lot of time just keeping your mouth shut.” Then the humor leaves his tone, and Chuuya falls solemn. “Anything you do or say now directly reflects on the Port Mafia, so don’t muddy up our reputation with all your existential bullshit.”
“Yes, sir…” You relinquish through gritted teeth.
You hate this. You weren’t doing anything that went against the rules and you got the job done. But you have to back down because—
“You’re directly under me now.” Chuuya takes out a lighter and tries, but fails, to start it in the rain. He groans and stuffs it back into his coat pocket. “Don’t be doing anything weird on my account.”
Your tongue clicks. “I’m not cut out for this field stuff. Can’t you just leave me behind to do the paperwork like all the other second-in-commands?” you ask, starting to feel embarrassed that you even went this far for the mission in the first place.
Chuuya eyes your expression curiously, as if he couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like to feel inadequate. Then he just says, “Boss’s orders.” He starts to walk away but then adds, “Don’t like it much either but you’re better off pulling out your own teeth than trying to change his mind. Now clean this up.”
You can only nod and surrender your hold of the ice on the ground so it can return to the rain.
Unfortunately for Chuuya, he steps on a spot of ice just before it could melt and loses his foothold for a brief moment, before quickly righting himself.
Unfortunately for Chuuya, you notice and so he tries to play it off with a bout of anger.“Do a better job, will you! You can’t leave everything to the cleaning crew.”
Both of you look down at the same time to behold the bloodied mess under your feet. Even he has to know it was futile to try to clean now.
But before you can reply with another half-hearted argument, his phone rings and then he walks away toward the rooftop ledge.
Finally, it’s over.
While Chuuya has his back turned, you covertly crouch down to the remains of the battered corpse and reach out your hand. A ruby snowflake appears between your fingers with its familiar ice cold bite.
You pocket it just in time for Chuuya’s phone call to end so he can bark another order to you, “Take care of the other one too.” He nods towards the still-frozen helicopter before turning back to overlook the sprawling cityscape below on the nearest ledge.
And you can’t help but steal a glance at him as you walk away, long enough to notice that his eyes still hold that same searching quality since the last time you worked together, every time he looks at Yokohama.
Chuuya Nakahara, hair as fiery as his temperament. I wonder what he sees in this city.
When you reach the helicopter, you take one final look at the face of the unfortunate man’s accomplice, his face forever frozen in an expression of terror. One hand rests on the man’s chest, and for a moment, you swear you can hear an echo of his heart trembling through the ice.
And in a dazzling cerulean gleam, you send a dozen icicles piercing inwards. The beating stops.
The rain halts as if to signal a job well done.
And in the aftermath, you steal one more moment behind Chuuya’s back before he can scold you. One moment is all you need for another snowflake to materialize, the red stark against the stained white of your glove.
35 and 36.
Somewhere behind you, the sound of a match striking carries across the now quiet rooftop. “Oi.” Not his grating voice again. “What are you doing?”
You close the glimmering artifact in your hand. “Nothing.”
“That doesn’t look like nothing.” He squints, trying to make it out in the distance.
Chuuya starts to approach you when another phone call interrupts him. One he couldn’t help but groan at. “What is it now, Boss?” He places a hand on his hip, the other holding the phone to his ear. “Yes, the mission is complete, though it almost turned into a shitshow…” He explains the situation to Mori, throwing furtive glances at you occasionally. “But Y/N took care of it. We’re bringing the merchandise back to HQ now.”
“What was I doing?” his voice raises an octave. “I had to secure the perimeter of course…” He listens to Mori speak for a little bit and then an offended expression takes over his face. “No, of course I didn’t let her have all the fun,” he yells, “What kind of superior officer would I be?”
You could only raise an inquisitive eyebrow at the exchange, chalking it up to Mori poking at the scorpion’s nest again. Looks like Chuuya hasn’t changed a bit over 4 years. Either way, you were too worn out to think any longer.
How do they do this day and night… I’ve only been out for about two hours and I’m cold, exhausted, and soaked to the bone.
“No, not bad for her first mission,” Chuuya grunts reluctantly as if it hurt to say those words. “Though she’s slow as hell.”
On second thought, maybe I didn’t do so bad after all.
Your gaze lands on your drenched clothes, the water dripping down off of them and merging with a bloody stream spilling over the edge of the rooftop.
Down into the sewers far below.
Down into the alleyways with the rats and the crawling bugs.
Down with the last remains of the rainfall.
The storm has stopped, yet in its wake, the cold scent of metal hangs in the dead air.
...
Chapter 2
Hi everyone! I'm new to tumblr but I really wanted to share the fanfic I've had in my head for 2 years ^^" The whole past month has been me slowly fleshing it out and developing the storyline since Chuuya has been living rent free in my head and I really needed a way to get it out hahaha... Like the tags say, this is gonna be a really slow burn long fic with lots and lots of character development and revelations and a lot of protagonist-specific original plotlines, so I hope you'll stick me through this journey.
