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He felt like he was going to throw up. But he kept thinking about how all of the guts would come back up if he did. Atsushi's previously white bangs had been stained a brownish-red, his face covered in the dried blood of one of the parents who'd looked too much into his situation at the orphanage. He'd finally had some hope, and this is what he got for it.
***
The headmaster had brought him down to the basement of the building, introducing him to a woman with brown hair and streaks of an ugly yellow running through it messily. He remembered hating that woman's hair so profusely that he'd forgotten to remember her name. The headmaster shoved him at the woman, who feigned kindness and crouched down, offering him a hand to pick himself up. When he'd managed to stand on his two feet, he heard the hatch to the basement slam shut, locking behind him. Atsushi had been used to being sealed away in places for a couple of days, punishment-wise. Though, he had been rather confused why the headmaster had locked the both of them in there.
The woman turned to him and smiled (Although, it didn't quite reach her eyes), "Hi there, little one. You can just call me ma'am. Your headmaster has decided to have me be your new punishment manager."
Atsushi froze in his spot, stumbling backward and falling on his behind. The woman looked disappointed, continuing, "Oh no, I'm not going to hurt you. All you have to do is eat a couple of things. We start slow."
Atsushi, who hadn't eaten in four or five days, beamed at the words, standing up and nodding.
The woman chuckled, "Eager, aren't you? I hope you like what I've prepared for you."
At that point, he'd followed the ugly-haired woman into the next room over, a dark storage room that was freezer-powered. Inside that room were racks upon racks of white bins with labels on them that Atsushi couldn't read. He didn't understand the words, but he figured it was just freezable foods that he'd never heard of before. He watched as the woman grabbed three bins, bringing with them a foul smell of vomit as he scrunched up his nose, covering it with his small, bruised hands.
"Not very good-smelling, correct?" The woman looked sympathetic.
Atsushi nodded while they walked out of the room, the woman placing the bins on a table in the middle of the first room they'd been in together. He watched the woman open the lids and check the contents of the boxes, nodding and closing them back up when she was done.
"Ma'am, what's in those boxes?" He asked hesitantly, his voice croaked out uncomfortably due to his earlier screaming from the headmaster's previous punishment.
The brown-haired individual clapped her hands together, "It's going to interest you, I bet. You're a curious child, correct?"
Atsushi nodded and watched the woman's grin expand, "If you tell me the two main things you did wrong today, I'll tell you. One of those things is what you did wrong to deserve the headmaster's punishment, and what you did to deserve my punishment."
Atsushi grew uncomfortable very quickly. He took a deep breath before he spoke, "I bumped into Kuniya today, and forgo- didn't say sorry. After that, I tried to make Chazuke, I broke the bowl, and I spilled the rice and the tea on the floor."
The woman nodded, "Very good. So, for those three things you did wrong after bumping poor, sweet Kuniya, I will make you eat three human body parts."
Atsushi felt his heart in his stomach. He didn't quite predict that there'd be one in it later.
"Oh, don't look so frightened, dear. It'll be over before you know it. You'll be a good little one and accept it, right?" She asked, crouching down and ripping his hair out patting his head.
Atsushi froze in fear and nodded, "It'll... be over after this?"
The woman nodded, "And then you can go right back to your headmaster's punishments."
Atsushi frowned, sighing before he stood up, holding his small, shaking hands out.
Walking over to the bins, the woman smiled, "Alright, what would you like to tackle first? The lung, the liver, or the heart?"
Atsushi whimpered, tears building up in his eyes before he stammered, "U-um. Can... Can I see?"
The woman gave a slight slip of her perfected mask, showing some insane unbridled joy for his question as she moved the bins down to the floor where he could see them. Pointing to each of them, she remarked, "That's the heart, that's the liver, and that's the lung. Wanna know what they're made out of?"
Atsushi shuddered, that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach growing as the woman continued without his answer, "The liver is made of many, many lobules. A thousand, to be exact. Oh, you know what cells are, correct?"
Atsushi gripped the bottom of his shirt, nodding, and the woman resumed, "It is made almost entirely out of Hepatic cells, which contain carbohydrates, fat, vitamins, and proteins, which is what you find in most food we usually eat."
Just to stop her from talking, Atsushi pointed at the bin that the liver was held in, catching a bizarre shimmer of happiness on the woman's face as she nodded, "Liver it is, then."
She hummed to herself before chuckling, "Let's start with the liver raw. If you can't handle that, there's a chance I may cook it. If you ask nicely and politely."
Atsushi nodded (about the only thing he could do in this situation), and sat on one of the chairs of the table. The woman brought out a plate, fork, and knife, placing them in front of him as she grabbed her gloves and slipped them on. Once they'd pulled and stretched around every edge of her fingers, she grabbed the liver and slipped it off of her palm and onto the plate, staining the white with a sickening dark red that leaned towards brown. He felt like he was going to throw up.
"Go on, try it."
Atsushi lifted an unstable fork to the liver, moving the metal back and forth to cut the liver, flinching in his seat when blood spurted onto his face. Despite that, he continued, knowing that if he disappointed this woman, he'd surely die. When he'd finally managed to cut off a piece of the liver, he stabbed it with the fork, unable to control the amount of force he was exuding from his limbs. Pausing, he looked at that disgusting piece of meat, looking at the separated levels of tissue and trembling where he sat as he slowly moved it toward his mouth. Tears blurred his vision before he decided to get over it and shove the damn thing in his mouth.
Oh god. Oh god, he wanted to spit it out. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god, what was he eating? Oh god, oh god, why was he still alive? Why didn't the headmaster just kill him?
The woman frowned, walking over to the boy and smoothing a hand over his back, faking comfort, "Ask me like a good little one, and I'll cook it for you."
Atsushi screamed, spitting out the half-chewed, disgusting meat, "No. No, I don't want to. Don't make me eat that, please, ma'am, please."
The woman furrowed her eyebrows, shaking her head, "Little one. That's not what I told you to do."
Atsushi froze before rapidly apologizing, "No, wait, no, ma'am, no, I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm sorry, please, please, I didn't mean to ask for-"
He barely had time to process anything before the woman shoved his head onto the plate, smashing the white, stained thing before she moved her other hand under his jaw. Atsushi cried, kicked, and screamed before he felt the woman move his head over the liver, smashing his face onto the body part, moving his jaw with one hand, and forcing him to bite down at the meat, grabbing the knife she'd previously given him and pointing it threateningly whenever he tried to spit it out. Eventually, he gave up, letting her force him to eat the meat.
It felt soul-rotting to swallow that liver. He was disgusting beyond recognition. He may have looked like a human, but he wasn't one. He wasn't. There was no way that he could sit there and just take it while she forced him to eat a human body part and still be human. It wasn't possible. He didn't want to eat a human.
But he was eating a human.
He was eating a human.
He was eating a human.
He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human. He was eating a human.
***
It started with just the bins. Every week, Atsushi would be brought to the basement, and he would meet the woman, and he would once again be force-fed organs by her hands. And then, it was the sickly child. It was the young girl, only about four years old.
Kuniya.
In just hours of her death, he had been thrown down the stairs to the basement, walking in on the first image that would stab him across the throat and leave him to rot in his pain.
The four-year-old girl was lying on the table her stomach cut open down the middle, the skin pulled away and blood leaking from her eyes with her bear stuffy in her hand, now ripped open and bloodied. Atsushi threw up on sight, the disgusting smell of a dead body wracking through his entire self. The woman was there, pulling out the salvageable organs with her gloves on.
The woman smiled, "Hello there, little one. Today, you'll be eating her."
Atsushi ran up the basement stairs, ignoring the screaming muscles of his bruised and injured legs as he banged on the hatch, screaming and crying before he heard a chuckle from behind him.
"No one wants to save you but me. I'm doing this to help you, little one," She hadn't even looked up from Kuniya's lifeless body. Blood dripped off the table, tap, tap, tapping on the floor with every passing second. Atsushi looked back, watching her smile as she worked.
"Ma'am... When will this be over?" Atsushi spoke, deciding to never take his eyes off her from then on.
It was then that she looked up, sighing before meeting his eyes, "Unlike your headmaster, I don't believe in beating children to get them to obey you. Not from a motherly standpoint, I've never wanted children. I believe in making them see the world as if it revolves around them being perfect. If they strive to be perfect, they will understand why you make them do whatever punishments you administer. I make you eat human body parts because I once was forced to do the same thing. I strived to be perfect, and everyone loved me for it. I want you to do the same thing. I will make you do the same thing."
At the time, Atsushi didn't understand it. He didn't think he ever would.
Until seven years later, when the detective agency brought him in. It was then, that he finally understood.
***
The way he walked. His personality. His work. His handwriting. His food habits. His friendliness. His kindness. His courage. Soon enough, he realized everything had been sculpted out of what that woman wanted him to be. He wasn't under control of himself. He hadn't been in control of himself any longer after he had met that woman. He wasn't Nakajima Atsushi, he was that woman's sculpture. She had chipped away at him until he yielded to her chisel, allowing her manipulations of his body, his soul, and his heart. She'd taken away everything that had been previously called "his" and made it her own. A doll, beady-eyed and scared when she started out, now carved to be a wall of defense, perfected in her ideals.
Atsushi hadn't been human since the day he ate that liver. He'd rid himself of any lingering thoughts that he was afterward. He'd spent weeks upon weeks in his cage, staring at the scratched-up wall in front of him, wondering just why he'd been chosen by whatever god to suffer in this way. He'd lost faith in religion pretty quickly after he met the woman. God wasn't on his side.
"Atsushi-kuunn," Dazai whined from the other side of the room, spinning in his chair to look at his subordinate, "Kunikida's called us in for a meeting, but I don't want to go."
Snapping out of his thoughts, the white-haired boy groaned, "Dazai-san, he said it's important. We're required to attend."
Dazai pouted, standing up and entering the meeting room without a single ounce of joy upon his face, along with Atsushi. Sitting down at their individual spots, Kunikida began to go over the mission.
"So, this is going to be an unpleasant session, and I apologize in advance," Kunikida spoke before clicking an indicator on the television, changing the image on the screen. Upon it were images of mangled corpses with their stomachs open, their organs either missing or amputated, their faces having massive chunks of skin and blood bitten off, "This is a cannibalism case. An ability user has managed to find a way to band people together, manipulating their minds with her ability, and forcing them to eat each other."
Ah. There was that pit in his stomach again.
Atsushi looked at the pictures silently, unaware of his expression as Kunikida continued, "We don't have any information about her face, her residence, or her job. We've got nothing. I will be looking into the leads that we have, but I needed to show the victim pictures to address the seriousness of the situation."
Yosano stood up, grabbed a pointer stick off the desk, and pressed the indicator on the television again to change the picture, "One of the surviving victims died soon after, but not before the police got to investigate him, and what happened to his body. Before this, we had no idea if the effects of cannibalism changed with this ability. We didn't know if there was no effect on the body with the ability in play, or if they were the same. When the police came to us with their info on the man, after he died. This is his picture and description of the state of his body, and from their information, he didn't have any of the common effects whatsoever."
Atsushi squinted at the description, reading, "It feels like my heart is going to explode. My stomach hurt extremely bad initially, and It still hurts now. I have a headache, but that seems to be it..."
Then, he looked at the picture of the man, including a video of his behavior while he was in the hospital. It was very faint, but the man's legs were twitching, his walking seemed unstable, and he seemed to grab at his arm now and then, as if in pain.
Atsushi shook his head at the incompetence of the policemen, whispering, "How did they miss all of that?"
Apparently, not quiet enough, due to Kunikida's head turning, "What do you mean, Atsushi?"
The white-haired boy stood up, pointing at the man's behavior in the video, "You can see that his skin is slightly pale, his legs keep twitching, he can't walk straight, and his arms are in pain. This man had Kuru and they missed it entirely."
From the corner of the room, Dazai watched with squinted eyes as Atsushi continued, "In his letter, he said he ate a lung while he was under the control of the ability, which generally means he had a lot of stomach pain, which he mentioned in the very first sentence. He also ate a liver, and that means he probably had some heartburn too, explaining why he felt like his heart was going to explode. The last thing he ate was a thigh, and he said later, near the end of the note, that he felt his stomach bulging, which means he likely had too many human body parts in his system already, and he was near the edge of death. Yosano-sensei, how long after this letter did the man die?"
Yosano watched with her eyes slightly widened before answering, "About five minutes after."
Atsushi nodded, "Exactly. Cannibalism can't be without any effect whatsoever. It isn't physically possible to not have cannibalism affect your body. So clearly, the police weren't paying nearly enough attention, and they let this man die under their guidance."
Atsushi hadn't even remembered to look back at the table. When he did, he saw the scared gazes of everyone in the room, except for Dazai. Instead, the brunet stood up, speaking, "Atsushi-kun, let's go for a walk, hm?"
Fuck. Why did he say anything?
When Dazai and Atsushi reached the nearby river where the orphan boy had first been found, Dazai hummed, "Atsushi."
Atsushi looked up at him, "Yes, Dazai-san?"
"I'm going to need you to tell me why you know so much about cannibalism," The man smiled, but Atsushi found that it didn't reach his eyes.
The white-haired boy paused in his place, taking a deep breath before shaking his head and smiling back, "It's not really a big deal. I just did some research, since I figured it would be helpful if we ever got a case like this."
...
Dazai hummed, "You know, you're not as bad a liar as I thought."
Atsushi froze, before gathering up the courage to speak, "I'm sorry, Dazai-san, but I can't talk about this."
Dazai nodded, "I understand. Let's head back to the agency, okay?"
Atsushi hummed, mindlessly following him.
Oh fuck. Fuck. Oh god, they were going to hate him if they found out. Holy shit, Dazai knows. He knows. He knows. He knows Atsushi isn't human. He knows Atsushi isn't human. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll. He knows he's a doll.
Before he could even think, they were back at the agency, sitting back in their seats. Atsushi's blank face concerned everyone, but none of them dared to ask him anything, allowing him to work subconsciously. Dazai had been watching him carefully, not liking the current state of his subordinate. He was too perfectly coordinated. He was too perfectly smooth with his words. He was too perfectly eloquent. He was too perfectly calm. He was too perfect. Everything was too perfect.
The sound of knocking at the door knocked all of them out of their thoughts. Kenji walked up to the door, opened it, and asked, "Hello, ma'am! Come on in."
Walking in through the door, the woman walked through the desks toward the couch before pausing. She turned, smiling, "Hello there, little one."
Atsushi stiffened. His breathing sped up, his body feeling as though it were ice as he raised his head slowly as his chest began to contract rapidly at the sight of her. When he made eye contact with her, he began to roll backward in his chair very slowly, as if she couldn't see him. The woman watched him back up, chuckling under her breath as she realized just her presence scared him so much.
"How have you been, little one?" She asked, watching as Atsushi stood up and backed away quickly as the woman rounded the desk and walked toward him.
Atsushi felt like that eleven-year-old kid again. He was still as weak as back then, stumbling on his feet to get away from her. The woman reached out her hand and Atsushi saw red, attempting to run to the other side of the room, without taking his eyes off her. The woman saw through his idea, gripping his hair and pulling him towards her.
"I assume you're perfect now, just like I trained you to be, hm?" She spoke, feeling a disgusting pleasure in his fear, "You haven't told them a thing, have you? You haven't told them just what you did when you were that disgusting little boy under my control. I knew you'd realize it one day. You'd realize just why I made you-"
Atsushi screamed, shoving her away from him. Without realizing it, he had activated his ability. There was now a crack in the wall from where he had pushed her, her body falling to the floor unconscious as he fell to the ground and curled up in a corner, his ability deactivating as his breathing was no longer an inhale and exhale, it was now a rapid pace of panic as he tugged at his hair, soon moving his hands down to cover his mouth to muffle his terror. His body was shaking, his heart pounding like a drum in his ears, so much so that he couldn't even hear the rushing voices of his co-workers trying to understand what just happened.
Kunikida yelled, "What the hell, Atsushi?"
Kyouka grabbed onto Yosano's sleeve, looking worried for Atsushi as Yosano comforted her to the best of her ability, "It's okay, Kyouka. He's gonna be fine."
Dazai looked at all of them, frowning, "Atsushi needs a moment. Please take this woman away and wait in the other room until I say you can come back."
"But-" Kunikida had started, only to be cut off by a harsh glare from Dazai. It was times like these when he realized why the man used to be a port mafia executive.
After all of them had left with the unconscious woman, Dazai crouched down to his level, lowering his voice to a calming tone.
"Shh, Atsushi-kun, she's gone. She can't make you do anything anymore," Dazai spoke, having pieced it together a moment after Atsushi stopped breathing at a normal pace.
Atsushi looked around frantically, whimpering and croaking out, "I can't, I can't eat anymore, Please, don't, don't make me eat them, please, I swear I'm human, I am human, I am, I am, please, tell me I am-"
Dazai paused, his heart stinging as he looked at the boy, holding out his palm for him to take, "You are human, Atsushi. You are."
"No, I can't be. I'm just, I'm not me anymore, I can't be. I can't be human, that's not fair to them, they were human, I can't be, I can't be, I ate them, she made me do it, I didn't want to, I swear I didn't want to, It wasn't- It was. It was my fault, It was, I, I can't-"
"Atsushi," Dazai urged a little louder, catching the attention of the boy, "You didn't want to. You didn't want to eat them. It wasn't your fault."
When Dazai tried to reach out for him, Atsushi shrieked, slamming himself against the wall in the corner where he'd hidden, "No! No, I promise I didn't do anything! I didn't, I'm sorry, I'll be perfect, I promise, I'll be perfect, I'll be perfect, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"
Dazai couldn't get anywhere with him, retracting his stretched-out hand and thinking to the best of his ability. He spoke a little louder, "Atsushi, you don't have to be perfect."
"I do! I do, or she's going to make me eat one of them alive! I can't do it again, I can't do that again," Atsushi's eyes were practically bulging, tear after tear spilling as he remembered the sounds of one of his only friends at the orphanage, screaming while he bit into him, "I don't want to hear them screaming again, don't make me hear them, I can't do it again, I don't want to make someone suffer that way. Please, I promise, I'll work harder, and I'll be perfect, I'm sorry."
Dazai felt himself growing sick at the thought of someone forcing a child to eat another living child. Even with all the things Mori had done to him, he'd never pushed him through the throes of cannibalism. The man had thought it to be too unhealthy for Dazai, but if it had been any less disease-inducing, he would've made Dazai do it. He reminded him all the time, after all.
Atsushi sobbed, stuck in his flashbacks. A flash of his friend on that table, screaming as the woman pulled out his eye and forced Atsushi to eat it while the nerves were still attached. Atsushi kicked and nearly pulled out his hair, burying his face into his knees as his hyperventilation worsened, "I'm sorry, I didn't want this- I didn't- I didn't want to kill you, I'm sorry I killed you, I'm sorry I killed you, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"
Dazai was beginning to stress, none of his attempts to make the situation better, working. Finally, he settled on the best bet he had. He apologized quietly before pressing a firm two fingers against a pressure point on Atsushi's neck, putting him to sleep instantly. Atsushi collapsed into his arms, Dazai catching him and wrapping his arms around the boy.
"Yosano-sensei," Dazai spoke, and the door opened to reveal the woman who'd been listening in. His gaze turned to her, and he took a slightly shaky breath, his thoughts swimming in rage, "Kill her."
Yosano held that same look in her eyes when she talked about Mori, answering slowly, "I wasn't planning on letting her go anyway."
Before she left, Yosano walked to her desk, grabbing her torture tools, "You'll need to stay with him overnight. If he has a PTSD-induced nightmare, you need to calm him down somehow. If he has a flashback, of course, the best outcome would be that you can ground him, talk to him about what helps, and see that this doesn't happen in an uncontrolled state ever again. This may be a rough week, Dazai."
Dazai chuckled, "Can't be worse than what I expect."
Yosano nodded, exiting the room and leaving Dazai to hold Atsushi for a moment before he picked him up. Dazai took a deep breath, trying to control his anger before he left for the dorms.
***
When Atsushi shot up in a cold sweat, he realized that there was no screaming occurring. Calming himself, he groaned, burying himself in his palms as he took deep breaths. Nightmares always messed him up for a day, so much so that he didn't even realize what had happened the other day right away.
"Nightmare?" Came a familiar voice from the other side of his room.
Atsushi turned his head, used to the man breaking into his apartment, "Yeah. I'm... still processing everything that happened yesterday."
Dazai nodded, "Well, I bought some ingredients for Chazuke. If you're hungry I'll make it for you."
Hm. That was unusual.
Atsushi lightly smiled, not possessing enough energy in his body to bring himself to smile any wider, "I'm typically not hungry after nightmares."
Dazai softly made a soft, "Ah," and continued reading his book as he kept his distance, sitting on one of the chairs on the balcony. This distance wasn't needed though. Atsushi gave himself a moment before he walked over to the balcony, wrapping himself in his blanket and sitting next to Dazai. The brunet spared him a glance, deciding to allow the white-haired boy to start the conversation. The entire time they sat there, the night sky beamed with more stars than Atsushi remembered, the silence of everything except the cars racing along the roads, and the distant chirps of crickets filling the empty sound of the one-in-the-morning weather.
Atsushi smiled, not befitting for the topic of conversation, "I never thought I'd see her again, you know."
Dazai nodded, closing his book and placing it on the small circular table as he listened to Atsushi quietly speak. Continuing, the younger boy hummed, "I can't even remember much of what she did in the beginning. I just remember the taste of it. The texture of each different thing she made me eat."
The brunet listened as he went on, "I thought that maybe, just maybe, if I imagined the organs were something else, I wouldn't have to remember the screaming. I was wrong, but I still tried to block it out as much as I could. She eventually got transferred to a different orphanage, but everything stayed. Nightmares, flashbacks. No part of it ever fully goes away."
Dazai stared at the cover of his book, sighing, "There's not a night where I don't have a nightmare."
Atsushi turned to him, staring with the slightest surprise on his face. Dazai smiled, speaking, "I can't be around scalpels. If I hold one, I have a panic attack, or I drop it and run."
Atsushi smiled back, nodding while he shared, "The sight of medical gloves makes me want to throw up."
Staring at each other, Atsushi snorted, and Dazai chuckled to himself.
Atsushi wrapped himself more firmly in the blanket, shaking his head, "Mentor and Subordinate: Extremely Fucked-up Pasts. That ought to make for a good book."
Dazai nodded, mischievously pondering, "I should write that. What about it, Atsushi-kun? Will I be a good author?"
Atsushi shook his head rapidly, "Absolutely not. You'd stun people and shock them to death."
Dazai giggled, "That's the point, oh subordinate of mine."
Atsushi laughed a little more before he fell back into his thoughts. He sighed, "I suppose there's no use wishing things had been different. I guess... I guess I couldn't be here, if things had happened differently."
"Doesn't mean that you deserved any of it, you know," Dazai spoke before Atsushi got to the self-blame section of his sentence.
Atsushi took a deep breath, "I'm still learning that. It's hard to believe after you've thought it for so long."
Dazai nodded, "I don't believe I'll ever get over it. Self-blame is one hard thing to shake, that's for sure."
Atsushi huffed, "You can say that again."
Sitting there in silence, the two of them watched the moon lower itself under their half of the world, the stars slowly disappearing as they made way for the morning fog. Managing to fall asleep again, Atsushi eased into silent sleep, a peaceful rest for once. Dazai smiled and decided his work here was done. He could rest as well. Soon, the both of them had drifted into a restful sleep as the fog hugged and cradled them.
Maybe they could just take this one step at a time. Maybe then, they'd be fine.