Was This Such a Terrible Ending? (Main Story Route)

Was this such a terrible ending? No. I had embraced the death I had pursued, so how could it be terrible?

Time stretched my consciousness out, longer and longer, as though I had lived an entire life all over again.

Someone outside seemed to be pounding relentlessly on the barrier, but sadly, I no longer had the strength to lift my head and look.

My blood slowly drained away, and my body grew colder and colder, until at last I could no longer open my eyes, those heterochromic brown eyes closed forever.

In that hazy, fleeting moment, I thought I heard Teacher Yaga calling me.

But as my breathing slowly stopped, I felt as though I had heard no call at all.

Someone had come to take me away. Probably.

For some reason, I felt a faint trace of regret.

Honestly, I should not have had any regrets. I was a winner in life, the only Osamu Dazai who had successfully killed himself!

Yes, this was an ending that was not so terrible.

Amid all that confusion, a few people seemed to be standing before me again, yet I also felt as though I had never had those people in my life.

Why was that?

Why?

Really, this world was so suffocating, so painful. Why did people have to live?

I still had not found a reason to live. I still had not found any meaning in existence.

So someone would understand me...

Wouldn't they...

Osamu Dazai's death was something everyone had expected, and something none of them had expected.

Someone who pursued eternal death like that would never choose to remain in this world.

He had decided his future from the very beginning and worked tirelessly toward it.

Yet even Osamu Dazai probably never imagined that he would meet such a group of people, that his story would lead him to choose to live a little longer for their sake.

But what, exactly, had Osamu Dazai forgotten?

His former family, his old friends-he had forgotten that he was not Osamu Dazai. From rejecting it to slowly losing himself in it, he had fought with all his strength. The ending had simply fallen short of what he had hoped.

As time slowly passed, the barrier outside finally dissipated completely.

But on closer inspection, the world left behind by the raging fire was empty. All that seemed to remain were a few scattered bricks and pieces of porcelain.

Neither Osamu Dazai's body nor the bodies of some of the Jujutsu Society's Higher-Ups were ever found.

The flames burned for a long time. Masamichi Yaga waited outside the barrier for two whole days, only to be left with an Osamu Dazai whose body was not even there.

He was very calm that day, and Masamichi Yaga was silent as well. Osamu Dazai's funeral was held at Jujutsu High, but Osamu Dazai was not inside the urn.

All that remained on Masamichi Yaga's desk was a final letter Osamu Dazai had left behind, along with some clothes he had worn.

His dorm room was still as clean and tidy as it had been when he first moved in.

There was not the slightest sign of life. His bedding and almost everything else were solid black, and even the curtains were drawn tightly shut, preventing anyone from seeing inside.

Masamichi Yaga was silent, yet he could not calm himself no matter what he did. At that moment, he did not know how to describe what he was thinking.

But he thought that his proudest student had died there, had chosen his own final resting place just like that.

Endings were, by and large, endings in death. Yet there were always people who had never imagined that someone's death could come so quickly.

(You can request side stories in the upcoming author's note.

I'll pick some of the ones you'd like to see and write them. Also, aside from the main story's bad-ending route, there will be an open-ending route and a happy-ending route, though neither will be very long.)