For odasaku.

[thesettingsun]

[Bookstores get all types. People who only come in for the magazines, people who come in for the romances but try to make sure no one is looking at them buy them...

And people like this guy, dressed in a way too flashy outfit for just book shopping, who when he sees Odasaku looking at the third book in a series, comes right over to talk to him. Despite them having never seen each other before in their lives.]

How is that series? I've been thinking of picking it up.

Comments

[odasaku]

Sakaguchi--

[ now this is a level of bizarre that oda can't begin to comprehend. if the sakaguchi ango that dazai is referring to is not the same as the mafia's top information broker that he knew ( not too well, but that doesn't matter ) then, somehow there's two of each.

two dazais. two odas. two angos.

this is too bizarre ] I know one. He has round glasses and he's a very intellectual-looking man. We drink together sometimes, along with, well, the Dazai that I know.

[thesettingsun]

That settles it. We drink together, for sure, but Ango doesn't look intellectual at all.

What's going on here?

[For sure, Dazai doesn't know, except it's weird and probably not normal.]

[odasaku]

I don't know.

[ oda's highly considering the option that maybe this 'dazai' is only a liar that stalks him, but that's too rude to openly admit... ]

You're a writer, but what about the other Ango? And the other... [ wow this sounds too surreal to believe ]Oda?

[thesettingsun]

We're all writers! The literary school of irresponsibility and decadence.

[Dazai's proud of this. The buraiha are terrible delinquents, for sure.]

-I'm the most famous one though.

[odasaku]

[ despite how similar the attitude of this 'dazai' is to the dazai that he knows, oda can't help but think how ironic the literary school's name is.

somehow, although it has nothing to do with himself or his drinking acquaintance, it describes them perfectly well. living in the decadent world of the mafia, where only the last rays of the light can reach, a world of crime that very few can escape from.

a life of irresponsibility and decadence... it seems to follow odasaku everywhere. ]

I'm sorry, it's the first time that I hear about you.

[thesettingsun]

What - you've never heard of me? Haven't you ever seen No Longer Human, or The Setting Sun, or anything else I've written? It's not like I'm hard to find in bookstores...

[Though this bookstore doesn't have his works, for some reason.]

[odasaku]

[ out of the two supposed titles that this "dazai" says, only one of them sticks out to oda.

and it's not exactly because he's read the book. ]

That's-- that's the name of Dazai's ability. No longer human.

[thesettingsun]

Ability...?

[If 'Dazai' were a liar who stalked Oda and his drinking companions, he would probably at least know what an ability is.

But he doesn't, and the confusion on his face is completely honest.]

[odasaku]

[ maybe he's just unaware of abilities-- considering they're supposedly still a government secret. maybe he's just a crappy stalker.

but it does ping oda as weird, and has to keep himself from frowning at the redhead next to him. ]

Yeah. It's like...uh...something he's capable of doing, that normal people aren't able to do.

[thesettingsun]

And it's named the same as my novel? What does it do?

[It's probably depressing. That was not a happy book.]

[odasaku]

[ depending on the viewpoint, a nullifying ability is as much of a curse as it is a blessing. it just depends on whose eyes you see it from.

oda knows this all too well. ]

Or you could have named it after his ability.

[thesettingsun]

That'd be pretty difficult for me to do when I wrote that in 1948 and heard of people actually having special abilities for the first time two seconds ago.

[You know. Chronologically speaking, that'd be challenging even for a genius like him.]

[odasaku]

19.....48.....

[ that's it. that's it this confirms it 100%. the person next to him is crazy beyond oda's understanding. even his own dazai can't compare to this. ]

We're in 2017.

[thesettingsun]

I know.

[He's not that crazy.]

I've been dead for a while.

[...but pretty crazy.]

[odasaku]

[ ????????????????????????

???????????????????????????

?????????????????????????????????????????? ]

Sure.

[thesettingsun]

I'm serious! So have Odasaku and Ango. It's the complete truth!

[odasaku]

I haven't said anything against it.

[ because 1. odasaku's not rude enough to do so and 2. dazai already sounds ridiculous enough. after all, dead people can't be walking around the way this person is doing. ]

[thesettingsun]

But you don't believe me. I can tell even though you didn't say anything.

[It's entirely possible that Dazai's just defensive and would have said this to anyone.]

[odasaku]

Hm.

[ no it's just that he really does have a hard time believing this. but maybe these are one of those things that will never be explained.... ]

So why are you back from the dead?

[thesettingsun]

Monsters are eating literature and people's memories along with it, and normal flesh-and-blood people can't go inside books to fight them, so dead people it is.

[The entirely serious and accurate answer.]

[odasaku]

..................

[ this has reached a level of awkward that Odasaku has never experienced before. he thought that he couldn't be surprised anymore but this...

hm. ]

That makes sense. [ somehow. ] But isn't it rude to exhume graves without permission?

[thesettingsun]

It would be pretty rude... and I don't think that zombies would help much? But we're summoned from our books. Less straight-up necromancy and more taking the emotions that are attached to an object and making them person-shaped.