Chapter 33: The Double Black

Dazai Osamu was unaware of the subtle changes unfolding on his face, nor did he know that the barely concealed blush had already revealed the turmoil in his heart to Nakahara Chuuya.

He focused all his attention on Nakahara Chuuya's narration, gradually piecing together his own image in the dream based on the content of the other's words.

What can be confirmed is that he is himself both in and out of dreams. When his consciousness leaves Yokohama in the dream, that body is not left idle, but enters a peculiar state of being under a system of trust, like a game character whose basic behavioral logic is set, able to survive, but having lost its soul.

In other words, the world in his dream also exists in reality, and the Central Plains is the best evidence of this. Perhaps the so-called dream is a passageway through which he travels between two real worlds.

There are subtle discrepancies between some details in Chuuya's words and his hazy memories, but Dazai can easily find reasonable explanations for these differences, such as the forgetting effect brought about by the passage of time, or some unknown differences that exist between the two worlds, causing them to see things differently from different perspectives.

However, for some reason, Chuuya so easily revealed all this crucial information with just a few words. Every sentence was logically clear and detailed. Their encounter and conversation went so smoothly...it was somewhat eerie.

If this were a carefully designed trap by the enemy, given his current state of near-total vulnerability, he would probably have been dead several times over by now.

To say I'd never imagined a reunion with Chuuya would be a lie. In countless moments of contemplation, I've considered the possibility of a vague hug, a mumbled greeting, or simply a silent gaze...

But the reality at this time completely deviated from all his expectations, and it was so direct and smooth, without any surprises, that it was achieved very easily.

Well, actually he didn't know what it would be like, and it was beyond his expectations that it would develop into what it is now.

Dazai's mind was still racing. He slightly raised his eyes, only to meet Chuuya's probing gaze. Those cobalt blue eyes were openly scrutinizing him.

Looking at Dazai's appearance, Chuuya Nakahara had to admit that although Dazai's personality was rather awful, his face... well, objectively speaking, was indeed quite handsome.

Especially this rare blushing expression, it's even more unusual, it's so strange and... kind of interesting, like a crab walking upside down on one leg.

That's strange, why is this guy suddenly blushing?

He couldn't understand it, and he wouldn't ask.

What stands between them, besides the difference in the world they live in, is the difference in time; it seems like a very long time has passed since they last met.

For Chuuya, it was the agonizing search and suffering of losing his partner, culminating in his eventual surrender. For Dazai, the shift between dreams and reality made that separation feel both brief and disjointed. An invisible sense of alienation, born from a temporal dislocation, temporarily separated them in two different places.

But this sense of unfamiliarity was destined to disappear. Dazai could clearly feel a familiarity originating from the depths of his soul, silently propelling them closer together again. It was a destiny etched into their souls, one that they were destined to be inseparable, and one that time could not completely erase.

Someone started a new topic, and their conversation resumed. After exchanging some more scattered information, a sudden cell phone ring interrupted their exchange.

Chuuya Nakahara answered the phone, exchanged a few brief words with the other end, and then apologized to Dazai, saying that he had to leave first. Without any further pleasantries, the two nodded goodbye without saying a word.

The door closed gently, and the ward returned to deathly silence, with only Dazai's breathing and heartbeat sounding exceptionally clear in the empty room.

Looking out the window, the city lights had long been swallowed up by the thick darkness of night, leaving only blurry spots of light.

Now, Dazai Osamu has enough time to sort out his thoughts.

He needs time, a lot of time, to process this mind-blowing day.

After thinking for a while, he picked up his phone, tapped the screen, and sent a message to Sato Goro to confirm the contract termination date. Then, he decided on his discharge date: tomorrow.

His physical injuries healed unexpectedly quickly, and more importantly, the hospital was too limiting for him; it was time to leave.

All his long-held speculations and hopes were fulfilled on this ordinary day. When he was all alone and recalled the event, Dazai still felt a sense of unreality.

He picked up the computer next to him—the one he had asked Sato Goro to bring over today—and decided to continue looking up some things.

He had originally planned to search for information about this world on his computer after finishing his business with Sato Goro, but this was temporarily put on hold due to Nakahara Chuuya's unexpected visit. However, he can now continue what he hasn't finished.

He turned on his computer, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he began searching for information, including but not limited to news, social news, and certain keywords.

The first thing that catches the eye is the daily news of this world. From the content above, it can be seen that the frequency of cases here is astonishingly high, with dozens of bizarre cases such as murder and robbery occurring almost every day.

Even more bizarre was the reaction in the online comments section, which was uniformly filled with comments like "Oh, it happened again," "Which street is it today?" and "The police are so inefficient," as if this wasn't a sensational, heinous incident, but rather an ordinary event as commonplace as a weather forecast. This collective apathy itself exuded an unusual atmosphere, but Dazai Osamu couldn't pinpoint the specific reason for it at the moment.

Even in Yokohama, where the Port Mafia holds absolute power, such heinous crimes are not frequently reported, and there are usually several days between them. Compared to what is happening in this world, it is truly insignificant.

Another striking feature of the news is the prevalence of detective stories. Headlines frequently feature phrases like "[Detective Kogoro Mouri solves another bizarre case!]" and "[The Sleeping Kogoro's Deduction Show!]"

Clearly, detectives have become a highly publicized and recognized part of the functioning of society. In Dazai Osamu's memory, there was also an organization in Yokohama that could be called a detective agency, something like the Armed Detective Agency, but he didn't know much about it and had little contact with it on a daily basis. He only knew some basic information, but that wasn't important at the moment.

I had previously obtained some information about certain people from Sato Goro, but the version of people presented to the public online was much more widely circulated. So Dazai Osamu began searching for his own name, as well as Nakahara Chuuya's, on the website.

The first thing that popped up was information about other people with the same name in this world, such as Osamu Dazai, the author of "No Longer Human," and other authors, but these people all strangely shared the same name as him and people he knew or was familiar with.

Dazai was so shocked that his eyes widened, filled with undisguised disbelief. He clicked through the entries one by one, the familiar yet unfamiliar names and their equally familiar yet unfamiliar works reminding him of certain people in his memory, and their supernatural abilities. It seemed that everything matched up, even though the only connection between the two was two nouns.

Scrolling down the website page, another piece of content comes into view: "Wen O Wild Dog".

The cover image's depiction gave him a sudden jolt—the iris-colored hair, the bandages wrapped around his head, and the oversized black coat...

A strong, unsettling sense of familiarity washed over him, but he couldn't immediately place it as someone he recognized; his heart, however, began to pound uncontrollably. What made his pupils constrict even more was that his name appeared prominently in the anime's synopsis: Dazai Osamu.

Dazai Osamu suddenly felt dizzy, as if something was influencing his thoughts, making him gradually unable to see the scene in front of him. The cover of the anime seemed to be twisting into snowflake-shaped blocks of color, and no matter what the content was, it eventually turned into a jumbled mess of colors.

He shook his head, trying to clear his head, while moving his fingertips across the mouse and subconsciously scrolling down the page. Soon, the content related to anime disappeared from the screen, and his dizziness mysteriously vanished.

Ah, it wasn't a misperception; Dazai realized there was definitely something wrong with this anime.

Although the anime descriptions were hidden on the page, the play button was still in Dazai's line of sight. He pondered for a moment, his fingertips trembling slightly without him even noticing, and then he clicked the play button.

The screen switched, and a rotating circle indicating that the video website was loading suddenly appeared in the center, taking up half of the screen.

At that moment, the computer's built-in webcam was silently pointed at his face.

Thump, thump, thump.

His heart was pounding wildly in his chest, as if it wanted to break free and leap out. Dazai couldn't find the reason for it yet, because he wasn't nervous at the moment, nor did he have any other emotions, but his heart was just racing uncontrollably, though not to the point of being unbearable.

However, waiting seemed futile. The spinning circle appeared to be frozen, and the video content simply wouldn't load. The screen was stuck on this interface.

Dazai Osamu's eyes narrowed. He quickly closed the page and tried switching to another video website, directly searching for "Bungei".

But this time it was obviously worse. The website page instantly distorted, turning into a screen full of glaring static and noise. The entire computer crashed completely, and no matter what key was pressed, there was no response.

A tremendous sense of unease instantly overwhelmed Dazai Osamu. He realized that this anime definitely held some kind of secret; it was like a forbidden zone closely monitored by some force, as if something... was preventing him from watching it.

He took a deep breath, forcibly suppressing his turbulent emotions, then pressed and held the power button to force a shutdown, waited a few seconds, and then restarted. This time it worked, and the system returned to normal.

Instead of searching for that anime, he found the most popular public forum in this world. He then logged into his current account (he deciphered the Morse code left by Dazai Osamu in his memo, thus learning all of Dazai's accounts and passwords in this world).

This account is of a very high level, which means that [Dazai Osamu] was obviously very active here.

Upon opening the profile page, the latest post immediately catches the eye:

[Looking for someone to read "Stray Dogs" with me for a fee. Anyone interested? Price: 1,000,000]

Many people commented below, with a lot of them enthusiastically leaving messages and raising their hands to sign up.

Scrolling back further, there's another post:

[Question! What's the movie "Wild Dogs" about? My friend highly recommended it, but my internet is so slow I can't watch it! I'm so frustrated! Please give me spoilers!]

The comments section here is equally lively, with enthusiastic netizens offering their own descriptions of the anime's content:

This anime is about a group of people with superpowers in Yokohama...

The protagonist's name is #￥%, and his ability is to transform &%#......

[The Hong Kong #￥% party is super cool! Especially #￥%, China #￥ and! @#￥......]

The plot is fantastic! Especially the *&#@ war and...

Whenever the description touches on certain core terms or key plot points, the text is instantly replaced with gibberish like "%￥#&*@". It's as if some mysterious entity precisely erases all crucial information, leaving only vague fragments.

This system-wide, targeted blocking suggests more clearly than any warning that there may be some kind of "rule" preventing Dazai Osamu from knowing the truth about the Stray Dogs.

Dazai Osamu's mind raced, analyzing the information contained in the current situation. His gaze gradually became vacant, devoid of any light, as if it contained the very darkness of the world.

He opened the forum's private message interface. The list contained many people who had sent messages, but very few with whom he had actually had in-depth conversations. The latest pinned chat history showed that [Dazai Osamu] had indeed successfully arranged a meeting with someone, and the two had exchanged contact information.

He wrote down the contact information and searched for it on his messaging app. Sure enough, he found it, and the nickname had a subtle quality to it: "[Clever Elementary School Student]".

He opened the chat window, only to find it completely empty. All the chat history had been erased, leaving it as clean as if there had never been a conversation.

...The more thoroughly it was cleared up, the more obvious it seemed, like shouting through a megaphone in front of him, "This person definitely has a problem."

His eyes darted slightly left and right, his fingers typed a line of text on the keyboard, and then he sent it:

Hello, can we meet again?

He was almost certain that in this erased meeting, Dazai Osamu must have learned some key information from this clever elementary school student, and might even have touched on some core secrets.

He knew that he was probably following the clues left by his counterpart, and he hated the feeling that every step he took was on a predetermined path, and he had no choice but to follow his predetermined fate.

Dazai Osamu loathed the powerlessness of being manipulated and controlled, and the predicament of knowing something was wrong yet being forced to act according to the script. However, the reality was still staring him in the face; he had very little information, and had no choice but to continue investigating along this obvious lead for the time being.

It can only be said that he truly lives up to his reputation as an alter ego; almost every step he took was anticipated.

Dazai Osamu didn't believe that the guy would forget to delete the content in his forum account if he remembered to completely format his phone and delete all his chat history. Clearly, all of this was for him to see.

While Dazai Osamu was pondering, a reply quickly popped up in the dialog box in front of him: 【Agreed.】

The reply was crisp and decisive, without a single unnecessary question, no small talk, and no curiosity, as if the other party had been waiting for him to send this message.

They successfully arranged a time, but a few days later, the other party said that they were only available on weekends.

"Oh......"

Dazai Osamu let out a very soft, cold laugh. This seemingly logical arrangement, and its unsurprisingly smooth progress... everything seemed like a meticulously scripted play.

The feeling was as if every step I took was merely the movement of a chess piece in someone else's game. And every step he took was precisely placed on the position of some unseen piece.

This feeling of being out of control made Dazai Osamu frown slightly in annoyance. He didn't know what that "Dazai Osamu" wanted to do, nor did he like to sit idly by and wait for his fate.

But at this moment, he needs more information to piece together what Dazai Osamu wanted to tell him, as well as some hidden content in this world.

He closed the chat window and turned his gaze back to the forum page. This account only had three posts; the first two contained the content described above, and the last post was about a long-term dream the other person had.

Meanwhile, Dazai gradually pieced together the thoughts and ideas of [Dazai Osamu] from the other posts left on the account. Whether it was asking about the content of that strange anime or asking about dreams, it seemed that the other party might have encountered something similar to him.

The account of Osamu Dazai's dream recounted that he had been having the same dream for years, in which an indistinct person was always calling to him, seemingly asking him to do something, but he could never understand what the person was saying. He then asked forum members if anyone had experienced something similar.

Countless people shared similar experiences in this thread, and some even offered solutions and advised him to keep a record of his situation. At the very end of the thread was a message from [Dazai Osamu]: "I have found a solution. Thank you all for your suggestions." He then closed the thread, never replying to any further comments.

As Dazai looked at the contents, a glint flashed in his eyes, and something else seemed to be on his mind, causing a small smile to gradually appear on his face, though his eyes still remained devoid of any light.

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Author's Note: After the hiatus, updates might be every other day, but I'm not entirely sure. I haven't decided yet whether it will be daily or every other day. Daily updates would be 3000+ words, while every other day updates might be 6000-7000 words.

I was rushing to finish my draft yesterday, so the update was late. I'm combining it with today's draft. [hugs]