The meaning of living

"Boss, do you need me to kill that cursed spirit?"

Toji Zenin looked at the two horribly mangled bodies, then at me, and asked in a subdued voice.

He had not wondered why I had brought out two bodies, one of them headless. Judging by what lay before him, though, it was probably none of his business.

All he needed to do was ask. His boss was his boss, after all. To save his wife, nothing I asked of him would be too much, and if it was merely a matter of killing a Beast Spirit, that was hardly difficult for Toji Zenin.

"No. Someone will take care of it."

I closed my eyes briefly, then shook my head, placed both bodies in the car, and motioned for Toji Zenin to drive us away.

I did not really want to stay here anymore. Or rather, I did not want to come to this bar ever again. I no longer wanted to make pilgrimages to places from the story, nor did I want to remain here. I would not deny that I was a little sad right now. Just a little. Only a little.

I had searched the Lupin for a long time without finding Sakai's head. I had stumbled and crawled through the darkness for a long time without finding any meaning in living, either.

I did not know how I should treat them. I thought perhaps I had let them down.

Osamu Dazai had been right, after all.

The things you do not want to lose will leave you someday.

Everything of value that people long for is destined to be lost from the moment they obtain it. Nothing is worth pursuing at the cost of prolonging a painful life.

I did not know what to make of this incident, but I suddenly understood those words Osamu Dazai had spoken. Perhaps, sometimes, they reflected the shape of my own reality.

The truth was that I had not cared that much about Sōsuke Mizukawa and Nozomu Sakai. At least, I would not normally care too deeply about former classmates and people who barely qualified as friends.

But now, they were different. Once, I had family and a wide circle of friends. We had gotten along well, and amid our laughter and conversations, faint traces of our reliance on one another would show.

But everything had become uncertain when I came to this world.

I had been unwilling to form ties with them, yet I had inevitably come to depend on them.

People always needed something to lean on. When they had nothing, they instinctively searched for something to fill that void. That was how I was now. That was the ridiculous state I was in.

I did not know how to put it into words. I had never forgotten my old friends and family, but after coming to this world, they could only keep me company in memories. Only in dreams could I search for what had once been.

And when I woke from those dreams, when I emerged from those memories, everything I could see, everything I had, amounted to nothing more than Teacher Yaga and the others.

Cast here so suddenly, with nowhere to return to-wasn't I just like a stray dog?

Unlike Odasaku in the main storyline, who had at least left Osamu Dazai with a goal, they had left me with nothing.

In truth, I had harbored the faint hope that they might say something to me. Anything would have been fine, as long as it gave me just a tiny, tiny reason to look forward to living. That was all.

But that had never been very likely, had it?

Fortunately, they had not meant that much to me. Fortunately, I had deliberately kept my distance from the beginning. Thank goodness. Otherwise, I probably would have been terribly, terribly sad now.

Of course it hurt to see ordinary friends torn apart before my eyes. Of course it was painful to have most of my remaining ties to this world severed.

But if they had been my closest friends, I did not dare imagine how far I would have descended into madness.

Thank goodness...

Was I lucky or unlucky?

Perhaps there was not much difference. That was how the world was. People were cold, everything changed, and everything I encountered was gradually heading in directions beyond my control. It was hard to feel happy about any of it.

Sōsuke Mizukawa had no family. All he had was an older brother who was already dead.

And Nozomu Sakai's body could not go home, either. He had entered Jujutsu Society with nothing but reckless courage, only to die at a cursed spirit's hands in his third year here.

However I looked at it, it was still a little saddening.

But now I understood Teacher Yaga's objections far more clearly.

Thinking about it that way, it was perfectly normal for him to have been so shocked that I had come to Jujutsu Society to find meaning in living.

Well, how many jujutsu sorcerers ever died of old age?

Very, very few. A moment's carelessness could get someone killed. People were all too fragile.

Jujutsu sorcerers and ordinary humans alike were far too fragile. How could anyone say they did not each have their own hardships?

In the end, I returned to Jujutsu High alone and lingered outside Teacher Yaga's office, unsure how to explain any of this.

Now I felt like a walking curse of loneliness. I had been here for less than two months, and practically everyone in my class, including the teacher, had been ruined by my presence.

Suddenly, the door creaked open. Teacher Yaga's eyes were slightly red, but he still wore his usual stern expression. The moment he saw me standing outside, however, it softened.

"Teacher Yaga, I..."

Before I could finish, Teacher Yaga interrupted me.

"This isn't your fault, Dazai. It has nothing to do with you."

Teacher Yaga rubbed my head. In the end, he offered no other words of comfort, only repeated those words over and over beside my ear.

I understood what Teacher Yaga meant. He was afraid-afraid that someone whose mental state was already as poor as mine would take his own life at a time like this. But I would have tried to kill myself anyway.

"Dazai... don't be too hard on yourself."

"Okay."

I returned to my dorm in a daze, forcing myself not to think about my two dead classmates, forcing myself to lie down on the bed and rest.

But that night, I was conscious of spending the entire night in nightmares.

It was still the Lupin, only there were many more people inside. Oda Sakunosuke was there, and Ango. The three of us drank together, then took a photo. In an instant, the world went dark. When Oda Sakunosuke appeared before me again, he was pointing a gun at me.

This time, he still fired.

Pain and sorrow spread through my entire body in an instant. Why was Oda Sakunosuke shooting at me?

I did not understand. Even in the IF Line, he had not fired at me. Even in that world, he had not killed me.

But now, in a world where he had never even appeared, he was going to kill me?

Could you feel things in dreams, too? I did not know.

I felt something spill from my eyes. In reality, it slipped onto my pillow.

Then came the scene from earlier. Rivers of blood, brain matter everywhere, severed limbs scattered in every direction. Wherever I looked, not a single person was whole.

The Naginata pierced straight through Sōsuke Mizukawa. He slumped helplessly, only to be propped back up.

Nozomu Sakai's arms and legs were snapped by brute force. Those sharp cracks sounded so real.

All I could do was watch, even though I could not calm my emotions at all, even though I might have been in terrible, terrible pain. Perhaps.

It seemed to happen in a single instant. One second, the bar was a friendly scene of laughter and play. The next, a blood-red world rushed at me. Powerless to resist, they died there in that bar.

The dream was so very, very long. So long that it felt as though I had lived another lifetime, as though I had experienced this incomprehensible ordeal all over again.

I wanted to stop it from happening. To stop Oda Sakunosuke from pointing his handgun at me again, to stop Sakai and Mizukawa from dying, to stop Ango from leaving.

But I never had the chance. I watched the scene over and over-five times, ten times, perhaps even hundreds of times? I could no longer remember. All I could do was stand frozen in place, unable to move my legs, forced to watch them die with my own eyes, forced to watch that person who was not Oda Sakunosuke fire bullets into me.

I'm a little tired. Just a little... it hurts a little, too...

This is the last time, my subconscious thought. Though I did not understand why, I went through it all once more. Only at the very end-

Oda Sakunosuke's gun rang out, and a bullet pierced my heart. I died in that dream.

Being killed by him... wouldn't be so bad.

In reality, I opened my eyes, rubbed my aching forehead, and opened them again.

Four hours. I had rested for four hours. The sky had not fully brightened yet, and dawn seemed just a moment away.

"Oda Sakunosuke."

I did not know why that name slipped from my mouth, just as I did not understand the state I was in. Perhaps I was a little tired.

I changed back into my school uniform and, for reasons I could not explain, approached Nozomu Sakai's dorm room. There, on his desk, I found a letter. From what was written at the top, it seemed to be addressed to me.

Much of what was written on it had been obscured. The handwriting had been crossed out, rewritten, then crossed out again, until finally, in a fit of frustration, everything on the page had been blacked out.

Only one passage remained: "I'm too selfish."

For a moment, I did not even want to read the entire letter. This was the first time-the first time I had not wanted to know so much, had not wanted to keep everything within the bounds of my predictions.

In the end, I left the letter on the desk, with no intention of taking it. I merely stared silently at the room for a long time, then left, as though nothing had ever happened.

Jujutsu High was beautiful at dawn. There were not so many towering buildings here, nothing to obstruct the view, so the sunlight felt especially strong when it fell on me.

For the first time since coming to this school, I wanted to throw myself into the sunlight and watch the sunrise.

Perhaps it was not actually all that beautiful.

Yet without realizing it, I stood there for a very, very long time. Until my legs grew a little numb. Until Mr. Yaga came over and gently patted my shoulder. Only then did I realize someone had approached.

Really, when did I become so careless? How could I fail to notice someone approaching me?

How strange.

"Teacher Yaga, did you need something?"

I lifted my gaze and gave Teacher Yaga a polite smile. There was nothing in my Heterochromic Brown eyes, yet to Teacher Yaga, they looked exactly like an abyss.

"Sometimes, when I'm feeling unhappy, I come here to look around, too. It helps a lot."

Masamichi Yaga was not entirely calm at that moment, either. His voice was still a little hoarse, something you could hear if you listened closely.

The world always had a way of making people feel dazed. At least, perhaps that was how I felt at this moment.

Teacher Yaga did not yet seem as composed as he was in the original story. Compared with the Teacher Yaga from Gojo, Geto, and Shoko's days at Jujutsu High, he was easier to read. It was easier to tell what was on his mind.

Only then did I realize that everyone went through a period of growth. This was one part of Masamichi Yaga's journey that the original story had never shown.

"Dazai, this is my first year teaching students, and this year's first-years have all already... That's why I had time to teach you."

When Teacher Yaga spoke of his students, sorrow inevitably surfaced in his eyes-a sorrow he usually kept well hidden.

"That's why you didn't want me to join Jujutsu Society, isn't it?"

"When you said you wanted to find meaning in living, I wanted to let you in. When you said those words, you truly wanted to die."

With a touch of melancholy, Masamichi Yaga recalled his first encounter with Osamu Dazai. A boy dressed entirely in black had been hanging from a tree beside Jujutsu High. His black coat swayed in the wind, yet his face was peaceful.

In that instant, Masamichi Yaga had barely been able to suppress the urge to pull him down and tell him to live-to try a little harder and keep living, just a little longer.

But after truly meeting him, Masamichi Yaga had felt that the boy's life up to that point must have been filled with sorrow and pain.

"Teacher Yaga, I haven't found any meaning in living."

I gazed at the sun. Its light stung my eyes until reflexive tears spilled down, yet I stubbornly refused to look away.

"You will. Perhaps that meaning isn't in Jujutsu Society itself."

"Is that so? If I get the chance to graduate, I'll look somewhere else."