Chapter Text
Atsushi doesn't remember what it's like to not feel hollow. It's all he's ever known, from the orphanage to the agency. He’s been told his smile lights up the room, it's a lie. He is but a reflection of happiness. The happiness of others makes him seem full, but it will pour out eventually.
What does it mean to be full? When he's committed his good deeds, he's full for a moment. His life has meaning for a moment. Only for a moment.
Naturally he's grateful for all he's been given! He’s not hollow because he wants to be, but he tries to give back what he has taken so selfishly. He helps Dazai when he has one of his particularly bad days. The days where his smile twitches minutely and doesn’t meet his eyes. The days where his attempts no longer have a joking tone. On those days when Dazai tries to leave earlier with excuses and lies flowing around his silver tongue as though it doesn't really feel like lead.
On those days Atsushi works harder, he works faster to make sure that Dazai isn’t alone.
“Dazai-san” Atsushi said with a spray-painted grin, “Would you like to come get chazuke with me?” Please please please say yes, I need to help if I don’t, I’ll die–
“Atsushi-kun! If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were hitting on me! You know I have no such tastes in men!” Dazai’s tone is chiding but the tiger under Atsushi's skin rumbles in discontent. Liar. Dazai’s eyes are slightly red in this lighting, he's drowning. His eyes flick to the door for such a small moment that if it weren’t for Byakko he never would have seen it. He looks for an escape where there is none.
“I’ll buy you crab?” His tone is a practiced faux confusion mixed with hope. With that Dazai breaks. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place, Atsushi-kun!” His grin is slightly more real, and the tiger stops its pacing. “Let's go then! Crab waits for no man, and I want to bleed your wallet dry!” Dazai’s smile is wolfish, and Atsushi can’t help but breathe in relief. It's more real than before. I’m helping. I'm good.
The void fills with a tiny drop of red. The familiar mahogany in Dazai’s disinterested eyes.
----
Today is odd. His entire balance seems to be thrown off kilter, like his entire house was rearranged so that everything was just slightly moved to the left and no one else has noticed. Things have been odd since he was little, so he quickly adjusted to this new normal.
He's always been rather quick at that. If there were two things Atsushi ever was good at or enjoyed was his quickness in acclimation and his liking for small places. When Atsushi was little, he remembers he actually quite liked his small cage of a room in the orphanage. His cage, it was His.
Sure, it was small, but it wasn’t like he had planned on ever getting bigger, that wasn’t an option. When he went in willingly, he wasn’t even chained to the wall. All little Atsushi had known was the cage. He never got to see the other kids' rooms, so it never bothered him that he was the only kid that slept on the concrete.
The days he wasn’t chained, and he wasn’t hungry enough to be dizzy, he would sneak around and get little things. Things that if the headmaster ever found, he'd be better off dead. He never stole anything of importance, only things like little snacks or a shiny thing he had the urge to keep.
The happiest days in the orphanage were when he got to keep his trinkets and candies because no one checked on him all week. He had to get sneakier because the first time he had found candy in the trash was great but what happened after? Not so much. The tiger made that slip through his fingers every time he tried to remember.
On a particularly extraordinary day he got the privilege to talk to one of the parents who weren't scared of him. They might have even wanted him. They had given him a small stuffed rabbit. He had named it bunny since he was too small to be that creative.
Bunny didn’t live long unlike what those parents had said. A few days later the headmaster tore it to shreds during a routine sweep of his cage. Beasts don't get to have friends.
----
Drip. Drip. Drip.
A white tiger pacing the innermost parts of his soul.
He sways where he stands in a dark alleyway. How did he get here?
I don't remember. I need to get home, it's my turn to make dinner, I think.
He shakes his head frantically as if to clear his head. Let's just go over what we do know so that way we don’t forget anything important at all, ok? We can't forget a single thing, or they'll know. We can't let them know.
Our name is 0786- No. Our name is Atsushi, Atsushi Nakajima. We live with Kyouka , in our dorm at the agency. We work as detectives, and we were kicked out of the Orphanage years ago now. We’ve never felt love but maybe one day we can tell our little rabbit sister that we love her, and she might say it back.
He tugs at his hair trying to breathe his heart pounds and his lungs ache, trying to settle himself.
I am a person; I have family and I have friends.
He collapses in the cold alleyway, curling in on himself as if to protect himself from a world thats meaner than he remembers. As the light begins to dim and sway, the only thought that crosses his mind is–
Kyouka is waiting for us to make it home, I’m sorry Kyouka.
The void is so warm at this time of night, the mahogany swirling within the blackness to paint a beautiful picture. A picture of Inhumanity.