An answer

All right, I admitted that not reading the mission briefing had been a terribly mistaken and deeply regrettable choice.

But, Teacher Yaga, wasn't there something wrong with you sending me here to lead this team?

Lupin, the bar I had stayed away from for so long, yet never dared enter.

There had always been something different about this place, and I had always had my reasons for refusing to go inside.

After that incident, the bar had been abandoned completely. The cursed spirit here should have been exorcised long ago, but whenever someone tried to assign me to this mission, I would find a natural way to avoid it.

Until today, I had assumed the mission assigned to them wouldn't be this difficult. Since Teacher Yaga had asked me, I hadn't given it any thought at all—until I discovered that this was the cursed spirit that had killed Nozomu Sakai and Sōsuke Mizukawa.

Actually, I could somewhat understand what Teacher Yaga meant.

Because I had been deliberately vague, the report stated that I had failed to find my classmates' bodies, missing the cursed spirit in the process and leaving myself no time to kill it.

If I insisted that it had hidden itself, the Jujutsu Society Higher-Ups couldn't do much about it.

But clearly, Teacher Yaga had believed that explanation too. In his mind, I must still have wanted revenge, even now.

With this mission conveniently available, Mr. Yaga had wanted to help me lay my troubles to rest.

Had I brought this upon myself?

Right then, all I wanted was to take the hanging rope out of my pocket and kill myself at Lupin's entrance, just to calm myself down.

I shook my head slightly and simply stood in front of Lupin, not knowing what I wanted to say for a moment.

A faint smile remained on my face. After a fleeting shadow passed through my russet eyes, they settled back into calm.

Watching the others beside me eagerly prepare to go inside, I felt an uncontrollable urge to retreat, even though I never took a single step back.

Honestly, couldn't I have been spared another visit for this sort of surprise?

I smiled and gazed inscrutably up at the sky, the curve of my lips as gentle as could be.

"Dazai?"

"Hey, are you all right?"

Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo noticed my condition almost instantly, then stared at me with questioning looks.

It wasn't strange that Satoru Gojo's Six Eyes could pick up on the change in my expression and state, but why had Suguru Geto noticed? A trace of doubt surfaced in my mind, though none of it showed on my face.

"Ah, this is where my classmates died."

I spoke with a faint smile, unable to conceal the sadness in my eyes no matter how I tried. I looked at Lupin's sign, still unwilling to go inside.

"If you really can't handle it, Geto, Shoko, and I can go ourselves."

Satoru Gojo thought for a moment, then turned his gaze back to me. What he left unsaid was obvious.

Probably something along the lines of, You can't even handle this? Still, hearing him say that was exactly what I had hoped for...

Between the Gojo Clan's Six Eyes and the other two exceptionally gifted individuals, it wasn't surprising that they had received this special grade assignment.

I was only here as their guarantor and backup. In other words, they could actually defeat a special grade cursed spirit themselves, without needing me at all.

They had only sent me along as a precaution, so surely I could just watch from outside?

I really didn't want to see that cursed spirit again. Even though I had said I would definitely kill it the second time we met, I always did my best to avoid it, so that I wouldn't have to watch Oda Sakunosuke disappear before my eyes by my own hand.

This was my own private act of self-deception, wasn't it? Truly, I could hardly think of what I ought to say.

But if someone was willing to kill it in my place, then naturally, I would be eternally grateful.

Eternally grateful.

I had no objection to people dying by my hand. After all, I was the leader of the Port Mafia. Killing a few people, or a few dozen, was perfectly normal.

With my criminal record, even if someone threw me into Yokohama Bay and soaked the entire bay black, they probably still couldn't wash me clean.

But if that person was Oda Sakunosuke, even a fake imitation of him, it was different for me.

Perhaps Armed Detective Agency Dazai would kill something that desecrated his dearest friend without hesitation. But I had never had Oda Sakunosuke.

By then, I could no longer tell whether I was myself or Osamu Dazai. But I had never even met the real Oda Sakunosuke. All I had encountered was that one cursed spirit that had fired a gun at me.

It was all I had. So, faced with its inevitable death, I vaguely found myself not wanting it to die by my own hand quite so much.

Nothing changed on my face. I wore a smile, my red scarf fluttering in the wind, while my thoughts had already drifted elsewhere.

Still, I kept part of my attention on everything around me, only responding after Satoru Gojo said those words.

"Then I'm sorry for the trouble."

I fell completely silent, then gestured toward Lupin's entrance for them to go ahead. In the end, under Gojo the Cat's thoroughly disdainful gaze, I remained outside Lupin's door.

I looked up at the sky, at the light already approaching dusk, and couldn't help feeling a little dazed.

Everything felt like a memory I had lived through before.

It had been dusk that day too. They had toyed with me twice in a row that day, and the weather had been just as scorching as it was today.

That day, I had utterly lost my reason to live.

That was why I refused to set foot in this place. It wasn't just because my two classmates had died here; Lupin itself already held more than enough significance.

Time ticked steadily past. I was actually worried about how they were doing, but I simply didn't dare set foot in that place again.

But if that cursed spirit wanted to hurt my juniors again, then I would deal with it myself.

I would, even if it took on Oda Sakunosuke's appearance again, even if Oda Sakunosuke's bullets came flying at me once more.

Of course, the best outcome would be for them to take care of everything themselves.

I waited outside, but after more than ten minutes, I couldn't stop myself from climbing those steps that still terrified me so much.

Was this what they called things not going your way?

I sighed softly, glanced at the two sacks of flour still sitting by the entrance, and walked into Lupin without looking back.

With the passage of time, the two sacks of flour had begun to yellow. Weathering had left holes of all sizes across them, and they had been worn down so badly that their original appearance was unrecognizable.

"Satoru? Geto? Miss Ieiri?"

I called softly, looking at the scene that was just as it had been before.

The place hadn't been cleaned up. Only the bodies had all been taken back.

Thick bloodstains still covered the floor, though oxidation and weathering had made it impossible to tell just how horrifying they had once been.

The three standing in the middle were Suguru Geto, Satoru Gojo, and Shoko Ieiri. More importantly, though, Satoru Gojo really looked as if he'd been dealt an unfair hand.

He had to fight Suguru Geto and Shoko Ieiri on his own, with the added agony of Shoko Ieiri being a healer. Every time he knocked some health off Suguru Geto or Shoko Ieiri herself, the two of them could immediately revive at full health.

Even with Limitless, Gojo the Cat couldn't gain much of an advantage fighting them.

It was essentially an invincible shield up against a healer who seemed to be everywhere at once. Watching the three of them fight was genuinely ridiculous.

And the outcome would most likely come down to how long it took all three to die of exhaustion.

Or perhaps starvation.

At that thought, I couldn't help chuckling. I didn't know how I had managed to laugh in such a sorrowful place.

But the sight really was extraordinary.

Fighting two against one, Satoru Gojo had wrecked most of their surroundings. Suguru Geto fought him without regard for his own life, and whenever he actually got hurt, Shoko Ieiri came over to heal him.

Gojo the Cat looked as if he wanted to swear, especially when he saw me trying not to laugh. That only made him want to swear more.

All right, if one particular remark counted as swearing, then he certainly had.

"Stop laughing! Get over here and help me!"

"Of course, of course. My sincerest apologies, Gojo, who could handle this all by himself~"

I smiled faintly, but still hurried over, intending to touch Shoko Ieiri and Suguru Geto. Even so, I couldn't resist teasing him.

"You're the one who refused to come in!"

"I never said that."

Satoru Gojo: ... After a moment of silence, he realized that I really hadn't said that, which only made him angrier.

And so, once the other two finally came to their senses, I, who had still been about to laugh, got to hear Gojo the Cat roaring with laughter instead.

"Geto! Shoko! You two are such losers! You actually let a cursed spirit use you!"

Suguru Geto: ...

Shoko Ieiri: I really don't want to admit it, but that does seem to be true.

In short, neither of them argued. They simply stood off to the side, looking around for something.

"So, Satoru, do you know where the cursed spirit went?"

Suguru Geto asked with some puzzlement. He had searched every corner without finding any sign of the cursed spirit, and that single question successfully left Satoru Gojo bewildered.

"The cursed spirit?"

It hardly needed thinking about. Satoru Gojo had only been concerned with one thing just then: mocking the two of them. He had successfully done so, while also fighting a certain pair who had no idea what was happening.

He had completely forgotten wherever the cursed spirit had run off to.

All right, now Satoru Gojo was the one being mocked.

But none of those distinctions mattered much. The biggest question was probably what we should do next.

So when all three turned to look at me in unison, I shrugged, then shook my head, regarding them with a smile.

"In fact, I don't know anything. I only came looking for you because you hadn't come out for a long time, and you hadn't told me the mission was complete."

I smiled faintly, my gaze continually wandering around our surroundings.

The bloodstained floor had already been altered, while the scene around me resembled the day I had first arrived.

Nothing had changed, except for the bodies that had been removed, and Nozomu Sakai's head, which I had never found.

Perhaps it had simply been crushed or smashed to pieces, or perhaps it had been hidden somewhere. Either way, I still hadn't found it. But looking for it now wouldn't be such a bad idea.

I didn't know why that thought had come to me. I drifted aimlessly around the place, a faint smile still on my lips.

"Dazai, are you looking for something?"

Suguru Geto seemed to have noticed what I was thinking and doing, and asked me in confusion.

"Did you read the mission briefing before coming here? Could you tell me about it?"

I didn't answer Suguru Geto's question, instead posing a new one.

"Oh, sure. It says it's an imaginary special grade cursed spirit, and then..."

Smiling, I listened to Suguru Geto finish that part, then motioned for him to skip straight to the end of the mission report when he paused.

"Third-year students from the class of 2001, Nozomu Sakai and Sōsuke Mizukawa, went... missing here. Afterward, their classmate Osamu Dazai reconstructed the sequence of events and confirmed their dea..."

Suddenly, Suguru Geto stopped short and stared at me with a strange look.

"That's right. I'm looking for a body."

My lips retained their previous curve. Sadness flickered through my russet eyes, before everything finally settled into calm.

Suguru Geto fell silent as well. He seemed to intend to look around as I was doing, though I didn't know whether he was searching for the cursed spirit or helping me find a body.

I wouldn't have come here to search for a body. I was only looking for that one head, which might have ceased to exist long ago.

Ah... honestly, what should I say? Never mind. I won't say anything.

Just as I had once said, "If I meet it again, I'll give you an answer."

And now, I would give them an answer.

I would, even if it meant facing a sight I didn't want to see.