Bungo Stray Dogs Vol. 7: Dazai Chuuya Age Fifteen Read online

  Copyright

  Bungo Stray Dogs, Volume 7

  KAFKA ASAGIRI

  Translation by Matt Rutsohn

  Cover art by Sango Harukawa

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  BUNGO STRAY DOGS Vol. 7 DAZAI, CHUYA, JUGOSAI

  ©Kafka Asagiri 2019 ©Sango Harukawa 2019

  First published in Japan in 2019 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2022 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Yen On Edition: January 2022

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Asagiri, Kafka, author. | Iwahata, Hiro, author. | Rutsohn, Matt, translator.

  Title: Dazai, Chuuya, Age Fifteen / Kafka Asagiri ; illustration by Sango Harukawa ; translation by Matt Rutsohn

  Other titles: Dazai Osamu no nyåusha shaken. English

  Description: First Yen On edition | New York, NY : Yen On, 2019. | Series: Bungo stray dogs ; Volume 7

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019005328 | ISBN 9781975303228 (v 1 : pbk) | ISBN 9781975303242 (v 2 : pbk) | ISBN 9781975303266 (v 3 : pbk) | ISBN 9781975303280 (v 4 : pbk) | ISBN 9781975316570 (v 5 : pbk) | ISBN 9781975316594 (v 6 : pbk) | ISBN 9781975337117 (v 7 : pbk)

  Classification: LCC PL867.5.S234 D3913 2019 | DDC 895.63/6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005328

  ISBNs: 978-1-9753-3711-7 (paperback)

  978-1-9753-3712-4 (ebook)

  E3-20211211-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Insert

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Phase.01

  Phase.02

  Phase.03

  Phase.xx

  Phase.04

  Phase.05

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Sango Harukawa’s Beast Rough Sketch Gallery

  Yen Newsletter

  Prologue

  A small passenger aircraft soared through the clear blue sky. Only one passenger sat aboard: a man wearing sunglasses and a black suit. Sweat poured down his pale face as his eyes anxiously darted around the empty aircraft. Hunched over like a child afraid of a nighttime wind, he clutched a pistol in both hands as if it was his good luck charm. The man, a mafioso, had just escaped from a certain powerful organization by the skin of his teeth.

  Knock, knock.

  He heard a sudden knock, then looked in the direction of the noise to find that it was coming from outside the window.

  There was a boy outside.

  He was around fourteen or fifteen years old and had a smile on his face. Unfathomable—they were over fifteen hundred feet in the air, on a plane in mid-flight.

  “Yo. Hope you don’t mind if I join ya,” said the boy, although the man could only see his lips forming the words.

  “It’s—it’s the Sheep King!” the mafioso shrieked.

  He jumped back just as the boy kicked the window in, shattering it in the process. A powerful vortex rushed through the aircraft, and then the difference in atmospheric pressure sucked out all the air, causing the plane to violently shake. But the mafioso paid no mind to the rush of wind nor the shaking. He crawled on the floor, doing whatever he could to escape the intruder. The boy stepped on his back and pinned him down.

  “You’re part of the Port Mafia’s weapons transport, and this scares you?” the boy scoffed, a note of amusement in his voice.

  His dark green leather biker jacket complemented his reddish-brown mane. He proceeded to rip a nearby chair out of the floor with his bare hands, then threw it at the broken window. The chair acted like a lid, stopping the violent wind from rushing through the inside of the craft.

  “P-please forgive me!” the mafioso begged as he squirmed under the boy’s foot. “I—I’m sorry I messed with the Sheep’s turf! I didn’t have a choice!”

  “Yeah, I bet you didn’t. No way you Port Mafia bastards knew what you had comin’. You hit us, we Sheep hit back and then some. But don’t sweat it—I already killed all the other guys involved in your little ambush. Rest assured I’ll be givin’ you the same send-off as your friends.”

  The mafioso reached out for his gun that he had dropped, but he couldn’t reach it. In fact, he wasn’t even able to lift a finger. His face twisted, bones cracking as his body was pushed into the floor. All he could manage was a moan. And yet, the boy had only a single foot on his back.

  It was gravity. The boy was using gravity to make his foot exceedingly heavy.

  “Impressive. I guess that’s the Port Mafia for ya,” the boy observed amusedly. “Even with all this gravity crushing you, you’re still thinking of ways to fight back… Okay, then. Try your luck. But first, answer me this: Why did you attack our turf?”

  “I didn’t…want…to attack it!” It sounded as if every last breath was being squeezed out of the mafioso’s lungs. “I didn’t have a choice… Our arsenal…was destroyed…by that calamitous god—by Arahabaki! The black flames…have returned from the pits of hell…!”

  “‘Arahabaki’?”

  The boy’s smirk vanished. The gravity weakened, albeit for a split second.

  This was an opportunity. The mafioso seized that moment to roll away, grab his gun, and aim it at the boy. He was clearly very experienced with firearms.

  The boy simply kept his hands in his pockets and fixed the mafioso with an icy glare.

  “Go ahead—shoot me. See what happens.”

  “Die… Die, Sheep King—Chuuya Nakahara!”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Hands still in his pockets, the boy unflinchingly spun to one side and kicked the bullet. The moment it collided with his foot, the bullet ricocheted, piercing the mafioso’s throat. Blood spurted out of his neck as he collapsed backward.

  The boy swung back around and announced:

  “I’m gonna kill every last member of the Port Mafia.”

  Phase.01

  This man was troubled. Simply at a loss.

  He was in the middle of a stare-down with several documents, a cigarette in his mouth. He stood from his chair and stretched, stared at the numbers on the wall, rubbed his brow, then sat back down and groaned like a bull about to draw its last breath. He faced the documents once more only for the meaningless shapes on the pages to vanish.

 
“This is hopeless…”

  His black hair half-heartedly combed back, the man was dressed in a white lab coat with worn-out sandals and a stethoscope around his neck. Dark bags hung under his eyes. He was clearly a doctor—one in a dingy clinic that was a mess to say the least. Scattered about were stethoscopes, medical records, and bookshelves full of academic texts. On the wall in front of his desk was an X-ray film viewer. Very much the picture of a doctor in a hospital office. And yet, this man wasn’t actually a doctor, and this wasn’t a hospital. In fact, it was the complete opposite.

  “Our weapons smugglers are two weeks behind schedule. My men are going to be fighting with kitchen knives at this rate. And it doesn’t stop there. We’ve already had three violent incidents this month where the city police had to get involved. I’m losing control of the low-level grunts,” the man complained as he eyed the documents.

  His name was Ougai Mori, leader of a powerful underground organization known as the Port Mafia. Having acquired the position only a year earlier, he was still relatively new to leadership.

  “We’re losing contracts for our protection business, conflict with other organizations is escalating, our turf is getting smaller by the day,” Mori went on. “This isn’t good. It’s been one problem after another ever since I took over as leader this past year. I never expected leadership to be so difficult… Maybe I’m just not cut out for this. What do you think, Dazai? Are you even listening to me?”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “So which is it?”

  The one to answer Ougai was a lanky boy seated on a nearby stool. He wore an oversized black overcoat, and a white bandage wrapped around his forehead was peeking out from under his messy dark hair.

  His name was Osamu Dazai, age fifteen.

  “Come on, Mori. Everything that comes out of your mouth is always so boring!” Dazai complained as he fiddled with a medicine bottle. “It’s starting to sound like you’re chanting a mantra. ‘We don’t have enough money. We don’t have enough intel. My men don’t trust me.’ You knew from the start that things would turn out this way.”

  “Well, maybe you’re right…” Mori scratched his head in vexation, then suddenly said, “By the way, Dazai, why are you mixing hypertension medicine with hypotension medicine?”

  “Huh? Because maybe something cool will happen, and I’ll be able to die in peace.”

  “That isn’t going to kill you!” Mori seized the bottle. “Sigh. How did you even open the medicine cabinet? It was locked.”

  “Give that back! I wanna die!” Dazai flailed his arms. “Life is so boring; I’d rather just die! But I want it to be quick and painless! Help me out, Mori!”

  “I’ll teach you how to properly mix drugs if you promise to be a good boy and stay out of trouble.”

  “Liar! You’re just saying that so you can use me! Do you have any idea how much you’ve put me through this past year?! And what did you teach me? Nothing! I’m gonna quit this organization and join one of our rivals!”

  “Now, now, learn to think before you talk. Your death won’t be quick and painless if you betray us.” Mori smiled darkly.

  “Sigh… I’m sooo bored. Why’s the world such a boring place?”

  Dazai began swinging his lanky legs back and forth. Dazai wasn’t one of Mori’s subordinates. He wasn’t even in the Mafia. He was neither Mori’s secret illegitimate child nor an orphan he’d adopted, and he certainly wasn’t a medical assistant. No single word or phrase could accurately describe their relationship. The closest approximation would be bound by a common destiny.

  “More importantly, Dazai…,” Mori said with a sigh. “You were the only one there when I inherited the previous boss’s position. In other words, you are the sole witness to his final will and testament. I can’t have you dying on me that easily.”

  That common destiny bound them together one year ago. Mori, the Port Mafia boss’s personal physician, and Dazai—who’d merely been brought in for care after a suicide attempt—conspired and carried out a secret plan: assassinating their leader. The man’s final words had been nothing more than a fabrication.

  “It didn’t work out like you planned, though,” Dazai said with remarkable clarity.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Choosing someone who’d attempted suicide to be your accomplice was an excellent idea. But here we are, an entire year later, and I’m still alive…and that’s why that deep-seated fear is still eating at you.”

  For a brief moment, Mori felt as if ice had been pressed against his organs.

  “…What are you talking about?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. You’re afraid someone will find out that you assassinated the previous boss.”

  Dazai’s expression was unchanging, which made reading his thoughts nigh impossible. His face was as still as the frozen surface of a lake.

  “What do you mean it ‘didn’t work out’?” Mori furrowed his brow as if he were scolding Dazai. “Nothing fell short of expectations. You and I successfully carried out the mission one year ago. It wasn’t without hardship, however, which is exactly why I never want to do something like that again.”

  “The mission isn’t over yet,” Dazai suggested with a cold gaze. “It only ends when everyone involved in the assassination and fabrication of the boss’s final testament has been silenced…permanently. Right?”

  Mori’s emotions hit him like a tidal wave. “…You…”

  Dazai’s gaze quietly penetrated Mori, as if his eyes could see inside the man’s body like some sort of medical device.

  “To that end, I was the perfect accomplice. Nobody would suspect a thing. Once you became the boss after I vouched for you…I could have simply killed myself for some unknown reason.”

  The pair spent the next few moments staring at each other in silence so heavy and noxious you might think it was a stare-down between the grim reaper and a demon. A single word rang in Mori’s head over and over like an alarm.

  Miscalculation.

  You misjudged the situation, he told himself. You failed to pick the optimal solution. You shouldn’t have chosen this child to help you. Dazai is unpredictable. He can be sharp but in a dark, twisted way. He’s observant. He’s cold and calculating with no equivalent even in the Mafia, where the most evil reside.

  “…I’m kidding. I was just making stuff up because I get a kick out of watching big shots like you squirm. It’s what I’ve been doing to keep myself entertained lately,” Dazai said before quickly returning to his usual laid-back, unfocused expression.

  Mori quietly observed him. Dazai showed flashes of brilliance one moment, but the next moment, they were gone. As soon as he seemed to have it all figured out, he’d confuse everyone by talking about his bizarre, meaningless fascination with suicide. It had never occurred to Mori before he became a leader, but something about Dazai brought a certain person to Mori’s mind.

  “You remind me of someone,” Mori said without a second thought.

  “Who?” Dazai asked, curious.

  But Mori didn’t answer the question.

  “At any rate, stop teasing your elders,” he said, smiling faintly. “Me? Permanently silence you? Don’t be ridiculous. Besides, I would have done that long ago if I’d really wanted to. It’d be simpler than breathing. How many times have I stopped you from killing yourself this year alone? It’s quite taxing, you know. I even disarmed a bomb under your chair once like the protagonist in a movie.”

  He couldn’t let Dazai die. Because if he did…the previous boss’s supporters within the organization would most definitely turn on Mori and claim he was behind his predecessor’s death. He’d already stopped two assassination attempts that year, both of which had been planned by his predecessor’s supporters. Of course, the traitors were disposed of, but there was no telling how many in this anti-Mori faction remained within the Mafia. Hence why he had to keep Dazai alive. And Mori found another reason this past year to do just that.

  “Da
zai, if you really want, I can prepare a drug so that you can end things comfortably,” Mori claimed, opening his desk drawer and pulling out a sheet of paper that he swiftly wrote something on.

  “Really?”

  “I need you to do a quick investigation for me in return, though,” he said as he kept writing. “It’s not a difficult task. Nothing dangerous. But you’re the only one I can go to for help.”

  “Sounds fishy.” Dazai eyed Mori reproachfully.

  “You know Suribachi City near the Yokohama Settlement, correct?” Mori asked, ignoring Dazai’s remark. “Lately, there have been rumors that a certain individual has been seen in that area. I’d like you to go there and check if the rumors are true. This is called a Silver Oracle. It’s a delegation of authority, you could say. Show this to anyone in the Port Mafia, and they will do whatever you ask. Use it wisely.”

  Dazai looked back and forth between Mori and the sheet of paper being offered to him, then asked, “Who is this certain individual you want me to look for?”

  “Guess.”

  Dazai sighed. “I don’t want to guess.”

  “Just guess.”

  Dazai stared darkly at Mori for a few moments, then slowly replied.

  “…There’s no way the most powerful man in the Port Mafia would give a second thought to some town gossip. That says a lot about just how important this rumor is. Plus, you’re giving me a Silver Oracle, which makes me think this individual isn’t what’s important. It’s the rumor itself. You have to know the truth, and you have to quash the rumor at the source; its spread alone is harmful. You asked me to investigate instead of a professional or one of your top subordinates, so there’s only one person this individual could be: the previous boss, right?”

  “Exactly.” Mori nodded heavily. “There are some people who must never rise from the grave. I personally confirmed his death, even gave him a most exceptional funeral.”

  Mori touched his fingertips, for he could still feel that moment. It was like cleaving a massive tree. He had cut open multiple people due to the nature of his work, but none had been as tough and thick as his predecessor. Not during any surgery he had ever performed.