#odasano

Part Four- Het Ships IV

Parts One, Two, & Three

“Coffee?” “My, thank you.”

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The art for @3rdgymbros who won my 300 watchers raffle. It’s Oda and Yosano in BEAST AU in which they work together. I think it would be lovely to see them interact.

Part I

So many years have passed, one aching day after the other.

Fifteen years of agony and regrets.

Fifteen years of devils and butterfly angels.

Yet, her heart never forgot the boy.

***

At last, her free day is here. She didn’t have to think much about what she’s going to do, it was obviously shopping.

She sifted through the crowds gracefully, she was wearing her confident mask today. The hussle and bustle of the streets became melody to her ears day by day. It was better than the sound of moaning patients and commands that never end.

While she was staring at some ridiculously expensive heels from a window, two little girls bumped into her.

“Hey old lady! Don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk!” said the one with hair the colour of cranberries.

Did that little kid just call her an old lady?

Before Yosano could give the girl a response the shorter girl interfered.

“Aya! That was rude!”

“But Sakura!!”

“Apologise to her immediately.” ordered Sakura.

“Sorry.” said Aya in a low voice.

Yosano smiled and bent down and patted both of their heads.

“It’s okay sweethearts, I’m sorry too. Those shoes just took my breath away.” said Yosano with a giggle.

But there was something else that took her breath away. 

A man was standing behind the two girls, he looked worried and the beads of sweat trickling down his face suggested that he was running here.

“Where did you guys run off to?” said the man, barely catching his breath.

He finally met Yosano’s gaze and apologized for any trouble the children have caused. There was something about his presence, something odd and familiar at the same time. She watched him hold the girls’ hands and leave. Yosano felt like she was going to regret not talking to him more.

“Um, I’m sorry for bothering but can you tell me where you got that coat from.” she said, a bit flustered.

Bad move. Bad move. Bad move.

“I can’t remember, I think it was a gift.”said the man.

“Oh I see, are you taking them shopping?”said Yosano pointing at the girls.

“Yes, but they always seem to lead me to places that have clothes thrice their size.”said the man.

“Let me take you to some perfect shops! It’s Yosano by the way.”she said.

“Oda, nice to meet you acquaintance.” he answered.

They wandered the streets, scavenged for clothes, talked, laughed and bought ice-cream. While walking to their next destination, Aya asked for Yosano’s number.

“Just a safety precaution, in case we get lost.”

The moment Yosano’s pen point left the paper, Aya ran and gave the number to Oda. Oda turned to Yosano, a bit surprised but then he smiled.

The days passed and he called. He called her so many times. They started going to coffee shops, parks, beautiful abandoned places in the city. Oda would read her some of his works and she would babble about the work load and her reluctant patients.

There was something about his writing, it felt like he was writing from a cage. He was longing to break free and start anew, but something always stopped him. Sometimes she recognized the children in his writing, how they were the birds he’d sacrifice himself for, the birds he’d never allow to be caged.

She thought a lot about all the people she encountered in her life. Isn’t it crazy? How we glimpse some people at the corner of our vision and then they fade into a door, into their lives, into their dreams and fears, into a world we’ll never know about?

We encounter so many, but only a few feel special. And he definitely felt the most special.

One day, while sitting in a park, waiting for the sun to set, Oda’s phone rang. He answered immediately, the look in his eyes changing. She didn’t like this one, in all the faces she saw him wear, she despised that one.

He apologized and grabbed his bag, leaving her with all the snacks stolen from Ranpo’s stash. Her legs refused to stay still, she followed him. It wasn’t in her nature but she did it. She got lost a few times in dark alleys scented with blood, in dark neighborhoods she never knew ever existed.

At last, her eyes caught a crouching figure leaning over a sink in a forgotten train station overlooking a field of sunflowers.

He was trying to wash off blood from his hands, the way he was heaving his chest, shaking, shivering, weeping. He didn’t look human anymore, Oda was drowning and she could see is her past self in the same sea.

Yosano moved closer, placing hand on his shoulder and then hugging him. He flinched, tried to break away, he gave up midway.

Yosano wasn’t a cage, she was freedom.

“I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m tired of stealing futures, dreams. How am I supposed to write about those things when all I do is take them away? How am I supposed to face the orphans who don’t know that the person they called father is a ruthless murderer?” said Odasaku, his voice breaking with every sentence.

15 years.

The boy was before her, the one who was glimmering with hope, who claimed long horizons and wrote his heart out.

Fate is a nuisance a lot of the time, but now, it was just right.

She cupped his wet face in her hands and kissed him all over his forehead and cheeks.Just like sunflowers that lost their youth, their heads were facing the ground. They carried the weight of human souls on their shoulders, they were no longer needed. Their bright yellow petals were falling, their thick stems were starting to soften, their roots no longer took in water.

Yet, something was always for certain, they will be reborn, their strength and endurance would never go for naught. Darkness consumed them, swallowed them whole in every form. It wasn’t the end of the road, they will face the sun again because everyone deserves a second chance and so did these blood-stained hands.

Yosano and Oda were no longer drowning, they were swimming, against harsh waves and storms, against gunshots and stitches, against devils and angels.

They were swimming.

When Odasaku opens his eyes the first thing he sees are the blades of a fan turning lazily above him. Everything is white and light. There’s silence, and the louvres of a half-shuttered window throws slatted shadows on to the wall. A smell of flowers comes to him, and when he turns his head in the direction of this perfume, he sees Dazai sitting on a chair a short distance away, a vase of flowers beside him. He comes to his bedside immediately, and puts a cool hand on his head.

“I thought you were dead,” Dazai says, looking for a moment like a small, lost child teetering on the edge of tears.

I was, he thinks, closing his eyes, and seeing only a long fall of luxurious black hair, a slim face of creamy skin and bright violet eyes, the sweet perfume amidst the metallic effluvium of blood that had hung over the room. Her raw curses sounds again in his ears, cutting harshly through the silence.

“She saved me.” Odasaku admits in a low voice.

Dazai stills almost imperceptibly. “She?”

fics i’ll never write | oda sakunosuke and yosano akiko as friends with benefits ( bungou stray dogs ) 

Fukuzawa recruits him from Ihatov, a city so small that Yosano can’t even find it on a map. Kenji tells her enthusiastically of waters so crystal clear one could see their reflection, of cows and sheep and goats as far as the eye could see, of how everyone shared what little they had so that no one ever went to bed with an empty belly.

He needs a room to stay while we clean out the dorms, and would Yosano be so kind as to accommodate him for a night or two?

Yosano does.

And before she knows it, when three days have turned into months and months turned into years, Kenji has become a constant in her home, as much as the potted succulents on the windowsill and the fairy lights strung up on the walls.

The second one she takes in is Atsushi.

The realisation that this boy is an orphan sends her reeling, a wave of emotion splashing across her face before she can hide it as her mind is transported to another place, another time, to man with a heart too big for his chest, who had orphans of his own.

Her lips form his name Odasaku, but the words do not leave.

She knows how that story had ended, in blood and death and ashes, a grief that had held her in its claws and never left.

It’s Yosano who brings up the idea of Atsushi living with her for a few days. Just for a while, she claims, until they get his room cleaned. She’s a doctor, who else is better equipped to care for this malnourished boy?

Ranpo smiles knowingly at her.

Atsushi never leaves, either.

The third one she takes in is Kyouka.

She’s an assassin from the Port Mafia; Yosano recognises the kimono that marks her as one of Kouyou’s. Kouyou must have treated her well, but there is a darkness in the young girl’s eyes that makes Yosano think that Mori’s touch had found its way into her life as well, and she knows all too well how that feels like.

She refuses to leave Atsushi, clinging stubbornly to this one constant in a life that has been so unkind to her, and helplessly, Atsushi asks if she could stay with them, just for a day.

Yosano tries to say no, really, she does.

But then Kyouka turns the full force of those large, pleading eyes onto her, and Yosano thinks of Sakura, with her pigtails and the same eyes that could make the most well-meaning of men cave, and soon, Kyouka is curled up under a pile of blankets, looking as though she’s always belonged with them.

This is becoming a habit, Yosano thinks.

She thinks about this often as she sits alone in the bar, a pink camellia giving a touch of colour to the dull amber of the whiskey glass sitting on the table beside her. Wondering if she’s trying to make up for her inability to save him by continuing his legacy. How Odasaku would be better suited for this, for nurturing and comforting and picking tender words out of midair.