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Nakahara Chuuya was probably dead, or at least showed every symptom of it.
Ever since the discovery of corruption and Mori’s awareness of it, Chuuya’s life was constantly in danger. He wouldn’t use Corruption without Dazai, unless he wanted a death sentence.
At least Dazai thought he wouldn’t.
Chuuya laid sprawled on the ground, his limbs cowered in dark, red marks. The glow of No Longer Human fading away, leaving his paper white corpse.
Chuuya had died at least half an hour ago, if Dazai’s observations were correct like usual. However, Arahabaki was still very much present in the ginger’s body. Arahabaki wasn’t built for Chuuya’s body, rather the opposite. So after the blood loss killed him, Arahabaki had simply kept running, twisting and turning Chuuya’s body like some sort of marionette.
As much as Chuuya’s pain brought Dazai happiness, he couldn’t help but be a little disappointed that this was how Chuuya had to go. In Dazai’s opinion, Dazai was destined to kill Chuuya. Chuuya, who was not supposed to knowingly follow someone else's orders if it would kill him: but, Dazai guessed the dog’s loyalty got him to bite his own tail.
Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his long tan jacket, Dazai shifted his feet and stepped in front of Chuuya in order to get a proper view of his partner. The image didn’t bring him as much joy as he had initially hoped.
Him and Chuuya had known each other since they were, what, fifteen years old? Throughout all of those years, Dazai had never held a stronger hate than the one he harbored against Chuuya.
But now, Chuuya’s otherwise deep, blue eyes were glossed over. The look of irritation he so often carried was completely gone. Replaced by a blank, distinctly non-Chuuya expression. One that you’d expect to see from Dazai, known for jumping of a bridge every week or so, rather than the much more grounded Chuuya.
Blood was covering almost every part of his body, making the cause of death painfully obvious. Chuuya’s normally smooth, clean skin was covered in red. There was no breathing heavily, or snoring that Dazai would tease him about later, and no sigh escaping his lips as a result of the exhaustion caused by corruption.
Without warning, Dazai turned around and emptied the contents of his stomach on the grass behind him.
——
Dazai viewed himself as a predictable person most of the time, in the sense that he was somewhat familiar with the reactions his body had to certain situations.
His own actual emotions were, however, strangers to him: not to say that he didn’t feel them.
When Oda died, Dazai kept himself together temporarily. Then, when he had escaped the mafia, hidden his tracks, and got to the closest thing he would ever have to safety, he had broken down in a matter of minutes; mourning the loss of the only person who’d ever cared for him.
When Dazai first met Atsushi, he’d grown surprisingly attached to the boy. Contrary to what Dazai thought would happen, he had ended up bringing more light into Dazai’s life.
Atsushi reminded Dazai of himself in many ways. He may not be as sharp, suicidal, or cold-hearted as him, but he was really just a boy looking to escape his past. Just like Dazai had done himself at Atsushi’s age. Seeing Atsushi bloom in the agency gave him hope that he could thrive in the light as well, even though it had been a difficult journey so far.
Then there was Chuuya.
Dazai never had any doubts about his relationship with Chuuya. Sure, they made a good team and all, but they never,
ever,
managed to get along. Chuuya was loyal to a fault, like the good dog he was. He wore his heart on his sleeve, and was surprisingly selfless for someone in the mafia. He did what he did under the orders of others, but shared an unconditional kindness to his subordinates for reasons Dazai couldn’t comprehend.
Dazai may work for others, but most that he’s done he has done for himself, and in more recent years, Oda. His desire to help others was just a poorly masked desire to help himself, while Chuuya didn’t seem to have any ulterior motives. He was always a better person than Dazai in that way.
Their differences always stopped them from being what Dazai thinks could’ve been friends in another universe. Chuuya
hated
Dazai for throwing away his humanity, and letting everyone see him as some kind of monster. Dazai hated Chuuya because Chuuya hated him; because Chuuya viewed himself as too good to jump on the sinking ship of dehumanization that Dazai built for himself.
And okay, maybe Dazai’s reaction to Chuuya’s corpse indicated that there may be something more to their relationship than Dazai initially thought. But, maybe he only found out after Mori sent Chuuya to use corruption,
without him.
Dazai wasn’t a stranger to dead bodies. This was since he was an enthusiastic creator of them in his youth, and he spent a lot of time as an adult investigating dead bodies created by others. He was pretty indifferent to them most of the time, the initial fear he’d gotten when first facing death having faded away. He may put on a mask and pretend to be moved in some way, but he never really cared as much as he wanted to.
So why the sight of Chuuya’s body affected him so much was beyond Dazai. It felt like something in his chest had been ripped away, a constant presence since he was fifteen. It felt just like when Oda died in his arms, the difference being that Dazai knew that Oda’s death would break him.
Dazai had expected some sort of celebration upon Chuuya’s death. Maybe indifference, since he couldn’t “bully the slug anymore”.
He hadn’t expected the sight of Chuuya’s body making him sick to his stomach, spilling his guts out due to it. Dazai wasn’t one to have strong reactions to gorey sights, and it had been like that ever since he first landed on the streets. But, apparently, Chuuya’s death went against everything Dazai thought he knew about himself.
That’s how Dazai ended up at his current location, pacing back and forth over the floor of an abandoned Port Mafia safehouse. Chuuya’s body laid on a table next to him, covered by a white sheet. He couldn’t stand the idea of looking at Chuuya any more than he had to. Probably because of his ugly face, which stayed there even after death.
Yeah, that was probably it.
Dazai still didn’t know why he seemed to care so much about Chuuya. He didn’t know what this unfamiliar feeling was, and a part of him was very interested in never finding the answer to that.What he did know was this; Chuuya wasn’t going to disappear under his watch.Now, there was one problem with Dazai’s plan; Chuuya was already dead.But Dazai wouldn’t let something as trivial as death stop him.
——
Dazai knew that raising the dead was not necessarily an impossible task. Or rather, he had a genuine belief in the supernatural, when the situation called for it.
Just about every country had a legend about raising the dead. While yes, they were very much legends, every legend has a root in reality, right?
“Are you alright, Dazai?”
At the sound of his mentee, Dazai turned around. He’d been up all night researching traditional methods of raising the dead, and had found the first one he wanted to try out. The ADA didn’t know of Chuuya’s death yet, but were bound to find out if Dazai failed to succeed.
“Of course I am,” he replied in his usual nonchalant voice, stretching his back with a grin.
“Right. You just seemed a bit off… you can tell me if anything’s up.” Atsushi said, ears turning red from embarrassment of making a mistake.
Dazai was honestly surprised that he picked up on it. He knew that Ranpo knew, as he’d been sending him pitying stares all morning. Kunikida and Tanizaki on the other hand, had seemingly stayed oblivious. Maybe he had underestimated Atsushi a bit.
He ruffled the weretiger’s hair. “I have a busy schedule today, wanna help me with my paperwork?”
——
Strolling out of the ADA prematurely, Dazai set foot for the safehouse where he kept Chuuya. The back of his head was still throbbing from where Kunikida smacked him, and the only reason he got out was because Ranpo was seemingly trying to talk to Dazai two on two. A conversation Dazai effectively dodged by making something about a new method of suicide up on the spot. He knew that Ranpo didn’t believe him, but two can play the game of “I know that you know that I know that you know.”
As he set direction for the safehouse, Dazai went over his plans once again. Initially, he was going to ask Bram for help. However, after thinking over this for more than a second, he realized that there was no way Bram would turn more people into his kin, at least willingly. While Dazai wasn’t over manipulating adults, he didn’t want to do so if it would affect Aya, Bram’s adoptive daughter. Starting a vampire epidemic would probably not count as protecting a child or those in need. She was the kind of kid that Oda would want to protect, and he couldn’t go against his late friend’s wish, even if it felt a bit like a curse at times
But, he supposed that Chuuya was a part of the machinery pushing him forward too. Not in the sense that Dazai cared deeply for him or anything, but he was a constant at least.
Dazai wanted to die, Chuuya hated Dazai. Those were the two things that hadn’t changed since he was fifteen. He had switched from the dark to the light, from mentee to mentor, and from criminal to detective. Throughout all this, Chuuya stayed the same. His relationship with Chuuya may have changed a little (a lot) after he left the Port Mafia, but Chuuya didn’t change deeply as a person. It provided a certain safety to know what would happen when they next saw each other.
——
According to slavic legend, vampires were creatures of the night created by the act of stepping on gravestones or jumping over them.
Bram may have infected many people with vampirism, but a less commonly known fact about vampirism was that it wasn’t synonymous with being a vampire. All vampires had vampirism, but not everyone with vampirism were vampires. True vampires were distinguished by one’s inability to turn them back into corpses or humans. The humans infected with vampirism by Bram were able to become cured upon Bram’s death, or deactivation of the ability, and were therefore not “true” vampires.
Vampires created by stepping on a grave were different from Bram’s vampirism, in the sense that they didn’t have typical vampiric traits popularised by books such as “Camilla”.
First off, fangs were a rare occurrence and the blood drinking was usually performed using other methods. Additionally, they were generally recognised by the addition of colour and pigment in their skin, rather than the lack of it. Their unique diet of blood gave them too much blood, rather than less than the average human so they weren’t really pale.
He would have to see if Chuuya had become a proper vampire too if he awakened and something seemed off, to ensure he didn’t accidentally create another kind of undead. Checking this required having a virgin boy ride a horse through a graveyard, and seeing where the horse stalled. The closest thing he had to a horse, graveyard and virgin boy were Chuuya's motorcycle, the safehouse, and Atsushi, so he hoped he wouldn’t have to depend on this particular method.
Getting the floorboards off was… difficult, to say the least. They were already half rotten, just like the rest of the building.
Digging a hole in the earth under the floorboards was also difficult.
But getting Chuuya’s limp body into the hole was the worst.
Dazai hated skin contact: it made his skin burn, which was part of the reason that he was covered head to toe in bandages. The only person who he allowed to touch him, now that he thought about it, was Chuuya. They could hold hands if a mission called for it, without Dazai wanting to fold in on himself, and Chuuya used to come to Dazai if he needed his ability deactivated.
Looking back, the skin contact that No Longer Human required didn’t bother Dazai if Chuuya was the one on the receiving end of it. He decided on storing this particular revelation in a place where he wouldn’t come across it again.
Chuuya’s arms were cold as ice when he picked him up, and sticky with cold blood.
In order to avoid another instance of spilling his guts out, Dazai cleaned Chuuya’s corpse. He took off his black vest, before dipping it in booze he left there when he last used the safehouse.
The alcohol smelled, but got the job done. The liquid was cold and didn’t clump the blood, in addition to the obvious antibacterial properties. Dazai wondered briefly if Chuuya’s disinfected wounds would cause him any pain, if he were to successfully transform into a vampire.
As he swiped the wet vest back and forth over Chuuya’s arms, the sight of the now bloody rag soaking up the blood from the wound brought Dazai back to their days in the mafia. Chuuya would often patch Dazai up after Mori’s punishments, failed missions, or bad days. Looking back, Dazai was put off by how often Chuuya’d done this like it was second nature, while Dazai had rarely returned the favor. Cleaning Chuuya’s corpse felt like fair payback, if not a bit too late on Dazai’s part. A part of him couldn’t help but wonder how this task would feel if Chuuya’s arms were warm to the touch.
After he was done scrubbing the last bits of blood off Chuuya’s arms, legs and head, Dazai rolled Chuuya back into the sheet, before carefully picking up the cocoon in a bridal carry. The act of moving him felt like a second nature to Dazai, who’d done this time and time again when Chuuya was hurt.
When he was alive, Chuuya had an awful habit of snuggling his head into Dazai’s chest when getting carried like this, which Dazai never failed to make fun of. Now, Dazai would do anything for Chuuya to do so again, if it would remove the soul sucking void which had appeared in his stomach.
Lowering Chuuya into the ground was the easy part. His body was easy to lift, even for someone with Dazai’s physical abilities.
He didn’t have access to a coffin, and didn’t have time to get one before midnight. Chuuya had died around twenty hours earlier, so his body was still fresh. Dazai knew that vampires weren’t known for keeping their personalities after death, but he hoped that Chuuya’s soul was tightly connected enough to his body for him to keep some conscience, and that the floorboards would suffice as a coffin.
Chuuya had Arahabaki constantly screaming bloody murder in his head after all, but managed to avoid displaying any sign of this. For all Dazai knew, this control that he displayed over the artificial god in his head may extend to being able to overpower vampirism.
Not that Chuuya ever told anyone about the level to which Arahabaki affected him, but Dazai could always tell when it came to Chuuya.
——
The wooden floor of the safehouse looked deceivingly normal, seeing as it was storing a fresh dead body. The last drops of blood were washed off the floor by Dazai, leaving only brown stains which fit right in between the specs of mold scattered on the wooden planks.
Dazai took a deep breath, and stepped onto the part of the floor Chuuya was laying under, listening to the wooden surface creaking. Then he took another step, landing on the other side of it.
A couple of minutes of dead silence passed, with Dazai listening out for any kind of movement. Nothing.
He took another step, this time over the makeshift grave, but without touching it in case this was the actual requirement to awaken Chuuya. But it was the same result as before.
If Chuuya were to turn into a vampire, then he would do so now. Dazai would probably be hearing scratching or chewing sounds, which were a commonly recorded result of a vampire not having any humans to feed on (a problem Dazai had decided to solve later), and biting the first flesh they could get their hands on. But there was only suffocatingly dead silence.
His first method of raising Chuuya back from the dead had been a failure.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Dazai was floating around in the dark, surrounded by his white bandages. Chuuya was right in front of him, looking properly beat up.
“You used corruption, believing in me? How beautiful.” Dazai said, unable to stop the smile forming following his words.
“I believed in your disgusting wittiness and craftiness.” Chuuya whispered back, his voice drained from the exhaustion caused by corruption.
“That was a somewhat violent way of waking Snow White.”
Chuuya looked like he wanted to shout at Dazai, or maybe laugh. Dazai didn't know what the unfamiliar look in Chuuya's eyes was called.
——Chuuya was actually in Dazai's dreams rather often, which Dazai theorized was a result of him thinking of ways to mess with Chuuya before sleep.Usually his dreams were more abstract, though. Dazai would wake up with just a faint memory of something red and pale, sometimes words uttered. The words in question didn’t tend to make sense, and Dazai would often wake feeling like something slipped between his fingers.Tonight was different, though. He had dreamed about the dead apple incident.Dazai rarely had dreams related to any sort of physical pain, like stabbings.He guessed it had something to do with the presence of Chuuya, who Dazai always associated with rather strong emotions and feelings. Chuuya would never fail to throw Dazai out of the loop when he appeared in his thoughts out of nowhere, pushing all coherency out of Dazai's head and replacing it with a gut-twisting feeling of hate and disgust.It was hard to tell what this hate was caused by. When Dazai first met Chuuya, he found Chuuya to be fascinating. Not in a romantic way or anything like that, but more like a scientist studying a prime example of a species he did not belong to. He guessed the hate started around sixteen, when Dazai and Chuuya met Verlaine. If Chuuya wasn't human, then what was Dazai?Dazai, who at times seemed so disconnected from his emotions that all that was left were exaggerated, fake imitations of them. Chuuya, who was always feeling, no matter if angry or sad. Chuuya, who wore all his emotions on his sleeve, to the point where Dazai considered his lack of subtlety one of Chuuya's biggest weaknesses.A very small, very secret part of Dazai, had certain feelings about Chuuya's humanity. Not exactly jealousy (Dazai would never be jealous of a dog like Chuuya), but something else. There was something that Chuuya had that he wanted, but he was never quite sure what. So, he never expressed it, and never dug deeper to find out what exactly it was.He wondered if his dream tonight was somehow an expression of that. There had clearly been something, something Chuuya had been trying to tell him. Why else would he look at Dazai like that? Telling Dazai he trusted him.The thought made Dazai’s head spin.--Dazai didn’t go to work at the agency the next day.It wasn’t that he couldn’t, he knew that whatever he had going on at the moment was not really a valid excuse. His unfinished paperwork wouldn’t exactly do itself out of sympathy for him.If having a bad day was a reason not to do something, then Dazai would rarely ever do anything: simple as that. In fact, it was much easier to technically show up, only to sleep at work and continue the routine of self pity he started at home.Instead, he spent the morning cleaning lumps of dried blood out of Chuuya's hair. His normally smooth, soft, and wavy hair had been replaced by a greasy, bloody, substitute.He could faintly remember cleaning and braiding Chuuya's hair when they were in the mafia, but the memory was blurry, as if from a lifetime ago.At the time, Chuuya's hair had been nothing like this though. He couldn’t help but recall a now bleak memory of his fingers between Chuuya's hair, the red strands spreading around them like they were liquid.Dazai had never had long hair, or been particularly good with it in general. He was an only child growing up, and didn't have any friends who could give him experience in the field. But, Chuuya's hair was so soft that Dazai didn't even need to brush it before splitting it into sections.Dazai remembered how Chuuya's hair had smelled almost edible in their youth, something that was probably the work of Chuuya's expensive and fancy shampoos.This time, it smelled of a mix of blood and the booze that Dazai was substituting for soap.The alcohol soaked through the bandages on his arms and burned the cuts underneath, but he couldn't bring himself to care.Dazai knew he'd cleaned Chuuya's hair after corruption like this before, but he could not recall it at all. He'd never been bothered by blood before, or seemingly hadn't been until yesterday. Actually, Dazai was pretty sure Chuuya's entire body being covered in blood hadn't bothered him at all in their youth. But, in the end, it was hard for him to remember his own experience being a teenager, and he generally avoided doing so for the sake of his mental health. So, he couldn't really draw any conclusions.As much as cleaning Chuuya's hair felt nostalgic, something inside of him hated doing so with every fiber of his being. Dazai wished he could just leave; erase the memory of him ever even seeing Chuuya's lifeless corpse. However, as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t break his promise to himself of saving the slug now. Not when he had put all this work into it, and he knew he couldn't bring back Chuuya without cleaning his hair first. After all, the slug would get so mad at him if his hair was dirty, Dazai reminded himself.----Chuuya's body was still in the saferoom with Dazai. There wasn't a lot of space in there, so rather than locking it away and covering it up like he would've done otherwise, Dazai decided on just turning a blind eye to it.But at this very moment, with blood under his fingernails and the memory of wringing lumps out of Chuuya's hair still fresh on the skin of his hands, he couldn't help but look at Chuuya. Even when they were working together as partners, Chuuya always felt like something Dazai shouldn't look at for too long. Like there was a barrier between them, hindering Dazai from ever getting any closer to Chuuya than they were. There were times when something akin to friendship, understanding, would brush by their fingertips.But every time they got somewhere close to getting along, Dazai would ruin it.Self deprecating jokes, thinking out loud about suicide methods, talking about humans as if they were an entirely different species, were all things Chuuya apparently disliked.That was the problem with people like Chuuya, or humans in general. When someone as much as mentioned one of their insecurities, they took it personally, even when it wasn't directed at them. Why did Chuuya give a shit what Dazai thought of himself? It wasn't Chuuya who he was insulting. If anything, Chuuya should be grateful for an opportunity to laugh at Dazai.But, now, Chuuya wasn't rolling his eyes at Dazai, fighting him, or just acting bitter in general. Chuuya was sleeping, at least part of Dazai chose to tell himself that, for just a moment, that Chuuya was engaged in one of those dreamless nights he hated so much. His light eyelashes were brushing his cheeks, and his hair was gracefully spread over the much less graceful floor he was laying on.His guard looked entirely down, and Dazai felt, not for the first time in the last couple of days, that he was looking at something forbidden.----Hundreds of years before Dazai's birth, the myth of the draugr formed on the Norwegian coastline.In popular culture, they're often compared to vampires. There are several theories stating that both legends stem from the same legend, because the draugr is also an undead creature that feeds off humans.However, where vampires drink blood, draugs eat raw human flesh.Dazai had to admit to himself: draugr were definitely not his first choice of undead. They were generally pretty bloody, and not as romanticized in pop culture as vampires. Introducing Chuuya as his "vampiric partner" was much easier than telling people he was a draugr, and then having to explain what a draugr was.However, there was a reason why making Chuuya a draugr was second on his list: there were in already several similarities between the two.First of all, draugr, according to Icelandic and Norwegian sagas, were absolutely hideous. That was actually their main description, making Chuuya fit right into their ranks.Chuuya may not be conventionally ugly, but he's ugly in the sense that he stands out. His blue eyes imprint on your brain with their unusual light color, and his red hair makes it look like his head is on fire. There's also just his face and how it looks. Dazai doesn't actually have a good reason for the last one, but Chuuya's face brings a lot of frustration in general.Draugs were also described to have black, blue, or "corpse-pale" skin. Now, to Dazai's... lack of comfort, Chuuya was in fact "corpse-pale" as of now.However, he reminded himself that "corpse-pale" was pretty fitting for Chuuya, even when he was in a... healthier state. His red-haired complexion made it so that he was unusually pale, pigments only present only in the freckles scattered across the entirety of his skin. Dazai hoped that if he were successful in turning Chuuya into a draug, he'd keep that trait. So that Dazai didn't have to deal with the most significant indication and reminder that Chuuya, was in fact, a draugr.The last similarity between Chuuya and a draugr was "unnatural strength". Since the moment they met, Chuuya's physique was a lot stronger than Dazai's. While Dazai was tall, lanky, and generally lacking in the physical departement, Chuuya was short and stocked. He could easily swing Dazai onto any surface he wanted to, and was often the person to carry Dazai home, when the physically weaker link in Soukoku got injured during failed missions. Surprisingly enough, the memory of getting swung over Chuuya's muscular shoulder like a sack of potatoes was one Dazai remembered pretty well from his youth.All of these traits, when put together, could possibly heighten Chuuya's chances of turning into a draugr.However, the downside to the draugr idea, was that the circumstances needed to create draugr's were a lot more... vague.Where vampires were created by someone's grave getting disrespected, draugr weren't created so directly.Instead, there were two circumstances needed.First of all, a horizontal corpse did not turn into a draug. Instead, a common indication that a draugr was going to be created was that the body had mysteriously moved and was sitting upright or something similar. With Dazai's current situation, he assumed that it was a "water does not boil when looking at it" situation. So, the next best thing for him to do was forcibly putting Chuuya's corpse in an unnatural position, as a way to ‘give him a hint’.Hours were spent making a diagonal ditch with a depth of about 150 centimeters, and when Dazai was finished, the sun had gone down long ago.Chuuya was once again packed into a white sheet, as to not dirty him. A stone appeared in Dazai's stomach at the removed comfort of telling himself that Chuuya was "sleeping". He knew it was a childish lie, just a way Dazai had motivated himself to make it through the day. But now, it was hard to ignore the grim reality of the situation when cradling him like that.Stuffing lowering Chuuya into the ground brought the same feeling it had yesterday. The hole was a bit too short, so Chuuya's feet were sticking out. Dazai crossed his fingers that Chuuya wouldn't instantly suffocate if he awoke. When he awoke. Dazai forced himself to remember that Chuuya would be back, it wouldn't end like this, Chuuya would—The second circumstance needed to create a draugr was greed.
The greed could come from a lot of things, but it was overall their main motivation. Sometimes it was because something precious was being taken from their bodies. Other times it could be envy at the living, a greed to have what they once had, resulting in a weak imitation of the life they so dearly wanted back.Chuuya was, in Dazai's opinion, not very greedy.There were a lot of things Chuuya wanted but never got.For an instance, when they were sixteen, Chuuya wanted nothing more than to be brought into the light. The flags were all dead, and Detective Murase was threatening to arrest Chuuya.When Chuuya was at the lowest point of his life, his unrealistic wish of leaving the darkness was his most well guarded secret.His wish never got fulfilled, and his greed for freedom disappeared.Chuuya also wanted a family. But, he was in the mafia, meaning he couldn't get one.Those in the port mafia could tell themselves anything they wanted:
"The mafia is my family".
"You're like family to me".
But in the end, all they were was a sad substitution for one. They were a family nobody wanted to live in: Kouyou, Dazai, Chuuya and Kyouka had all made their attempts to leave it, some more successful than others. As much as they could play pretend, the Mafia had never been anyone's first choice.Dazai knows Chuuya actually slightly succeeded in the aspect of finding himself a family at one point. He'd found a group supporting him unconditionally, only for them to get killed by the man who called Chuuya his brother a meere year after Chuuya became part of their group.None of this would help Dazai here, though. He didn't think that psychoanalysing Chuuya out loud would be in his own favour, and he wasn't even sure if Chuuya could remember wanting to leave the mafia. Chuuya's lack of greed didn't come from lack of wanting, but lack of trying. There were so many things in Chuuya's life that Chuuya just accepted that he couldn’t get.If you tell yourself that you hate the idea of something, or just the concept in general for long enough, you can start believing it. Dazai wouldn't put it past the slug to have repressed dreams he now deemed out of reach.Due to the lack of psychological greed, Dazai chose to remove a physical object from Chuuya, before stuffing him back into the floorboards. The object in question was Chuuya's choker that he bought himself his second year in the mafia, which resulted in relentless teasing from Dazai at the time.
“Chuuya is not working very hard against the dog allegations, is he?”
In Dazai's modest opinion, it was a tacky piece of fashion. He guessed some people would be into it (Dazai was not one of them), but why Chuuya had chosen to wear it for six years was beyond him.----After Chuuya was buried, Dazai was once again waiting. By waiting, he meant lying on the floor, staring into space, painfully aware of the body which was only half a meter from him.His empty stomach was starting to take a toll on him. He was used to going down into the café at the agency about once a day, where he could get all the food he needed. At one point he thinks he might have fallen asleep a couple of hours after midnight, due to a mix of hunger and just general fatigue. He guessed he would have to return to the agency for a snack tomorrow.Dazai couldn't find any specifics as to when draugr woke up while researching.The general consensus was that it happened when the body was pretty fresh, and the death was still deeply engraved in it. Chuuya wasn't a patient person: Dazai doubted that it would take too long, with his head face down into dirt, and the leather of his precious choker being fiddled with by Dazai, for him to make his return.Dazai sat and waited for Chuuya's inevitable return until sundown. He was less surprised than he wanted to be when it didn't come.