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

[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.