Happiness is Around The Corner.

But don’t you realize just a little that I’ve wanted to live a normal life? And how hard I’ve worked for it? I’ve been hanging by a thread, and it’ll break with a bit more weight. I tried my best to be careful, though. You see that, don’t you? I’m not weak, my troubles are just too heavy. It’s stupid to talk like this. But if I don’t speak out loud and clear, people are taken in by my cheeky manner. Even you are. ‘He’s only acting when he talks about his troubles’ – that’s how casually you all take me.

As long as you have the desire to be somebody, you will not fall into decadence. And you don’t have that kind of goal. You are passionate about wanting to see what it is like to fail.

I've recently seen multiple people say that in the Heartless Cur Akutagawa was 14 and Dazai 16, but is there any source to that? I thought the timeframe was never explicitated, but of course I might be missing something.

I think the most solid thing I could find was Akutagawa's wiki, specifically on the section on Dazai — which states that he was taken in at 14 in The Heartless Cur?

I craved desperately some great savage joy, no matter how immense the suffering that might ensue…