• Fifteen-year-old Dazai Osamu and Nakahara Chuuya were supposed to finish this in minutes.

In and out. Clean mission. No complications.

The building has other plans.

It starts with a fracture that runs through the structure like a warning too late to matter. Dust drops from the ceiling in slow, drifting sheets. Somewhere in the chaos, a scythe-like weapon flashes through the dim light and cuts the moment in half.

Dazai is hit.

The blade tears across his chest and drags down through his torso in a single brutal line. His body reacts a second too slowly, like it can’t quite process the damage, and then he collapses. No sound. No dramatic final movement. Just… sudden stillness, as if something inside him has been switched off and forgotten.

He doesn’t get back up.

Chuuya sees it happen.

And then the building gives out.

The floor ruptures beneath them. The mission site folds inward with a deafening roar, concrete and steel screaming as everything collapses at once. Chuuya is thrown hard, swallowed by debris and impact, the world spinning into black as rubble buries sound, light, and direction.

The last thing he sees before everything goes dark is Dazai—

motionless in the ruins.

Not moving.

Not reacting.

Already gone.

⸻

When Chuuya wakes, the world is quieter in the worst possible way.

The building is half-dead around them, groaning under its own collapse. Dust hangs thick in the air, drifting through fractured beams of light. His body aches under layers of debris, pinned and half-buried.

And there’s weight across him.

Dazai.

Fifteen-year-old Dazai Osamu is still wrapped around him like a broken shield, arms slack, head resting against Chuuya’s shoulder at an unnatural angle. His face is pale beneath dust and shadow, his uniform torn open where the wound disappears beneath fabric and rubble.

There is no visible breath.

No movement at all.

Just stillness so complete it feels deliberate.

Chuuya stares for half a second too long, like if he waits the world might correct itself.

It doesn’t.

Then panic detonates.

“Dazai…?” His voice cracks immediately, raw and disbelieving.

Nothing.

Chuuya jerks forward, grabbing his shoulder. “Hey—HEY! Don’t you mess with me, bastard!”

Dazai’s body shifts slightly with the motion. Wrongly light. Wrongly lifeless.

Chuuya freezes.

Then he moves.

He starts digging.

“Someone!” he shouts, choking on dust as he claws at rubble with shaking hands. “Anyone hear me?! We’re down here!”

Concrete grinds against his fingers. Metal beams groan overhead, threatening to shift again with every movement. The collapse hasn’t finished deciding what stays and what gets buried forever.

He doesn’t stop.

Not even when debris rains down in warning tremors.

Not even when the space around them tightens like a closing fist.

Not even when Dazai remains completely, impossibly still against him.

Chuuya grabs him again, pulling him closer like force alone could rewrite reality.

“Get up,” he snarls, voice breaking between fury and fear. “You don’t get to die like this. Not here.”

The building creaks above them, swallowing light inch by inch.

And Chuuya keeps digging anyway, trapped under tons of ruin with a boy who doesn’t move—

refusing to let silence be the final answer.*