Extra 8 (Watching Boss Dazai's Life)

"Gravity as an ability is insanely cool no matter how you look at it, and he's such a good fighter, too."

Yuji Itadori spoke with sparkling eyes and an eager expression.

"I think his natural talent for fighting is just ridiculous."

Nobara Kugisaki offered the casual remark nonchalantly, though she had a fairly good impression of the boy herself.

"He did grow up in the slums, after all..." Listening to the two kids talking ahead of him, Toji Zenin couldn't help murmuring under his breath.

But even though jujutsu sorcerers generally had good hearing, not a single person heard what Toji Zenin said.

[A fierce battle erupted, yet Chūya Nakahara still handled the entire squad single-handedly with ease.

Osamu Dazai, who stood to the side watching the fighting indifferently, felt a slight sting on his face. He lightly wiped the blood from his cheek and brought it to his mouth.

Osamu Dazai looked at the handgun that had just fallen to the ground, then at the man sprawled there who wasn't quite dead yet, and reached out to pick up the gun.

In that brief interval, Chūya Nakahara had already wiped out almost everyone who had come as reinforcements and was standing before the villa's entrance.

"Tell me, why did you attack this place?"

Chūya Nakahara asked the question calmly as he looked down at one of the men lying on the ground, silently watching the blood flowing from his back up to the back of his head.

The nearly dead man before Chūya Nakahara seemed unable to speak because of his injuries, or perhaps he simply refused to betray his organization.

But Chūya Nakahara no longer cared. The outcome would be the same either way.

"Looks like we'll have to wait for our partner's investigation results." Chūya Nakahara spoke unhurriedly, slowly stepping past the man who lay on the ground at death's door and glancing at the villa before him.

Then he heard Osamu Dazai's voice behind him.

"How unfortunate. Are you in pain?"

Chūya Nakahara silently turned around to find Osamu Dazai crouched before the half-dead man on the ground, coaxing him to say something.

"You already have one foot in the grave. In five minutes, you'll be on your way to the Sanzu River. I couldn't bear five minutes of hellish pain like that. Do you want this gun to set you free?"

A glimmer suddenly appeared in Osamu Dazai's eyes, only to be completely hidden a moment later by his thick, unruly hair. His voice remained calm and even. Perhaps one person's death could never stir so much as a ripple in him.

Osamu Dazai slowly released the safety and continued.

"If you do, tell me while you can still speak."

Osamu Dazai looked calmly at the man before him until his trembling voice rang out.

"Shoot."

As those words ended, Osamu Dazai silently rose from the ground and raised his hand to aim. A sudden gunshot shattered the silence, followed by the sound of a casing hitting the ground, cutting short the life of the man before him.

But Osamu Dazai didn't lower the handgun. On a whim, he fired several more shots into the man's forehead.

At first, Osamu Dazai smiled without opening his mouth, a hint of laughter audible only in the sounds coming from his throat.

Then Dazai simply opened his mouth, his face breaking into a wide grin and his eyes turning wild. The gun in his hand kept pumping bullets into the already dead man, and his laughter grew louder and louder.

"What a gift from death!"

Osamu Dazai looked utterly exhilarated, his smile only widening. As for how someone could blend composure and madness so completely, no one could say.]

"...Dazai?"

This wasn't the first time Suguru Geto had been bewildered, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

In their eyes, Osamu Dazai had always been calm and distant, gentle and gentlemanly. Although his manners and charm mostly surfaced around the girls he interacted with, even as an adult who perhaps wasn't all that mature, Osamu Dazai had never crossed a line.

They had never entered Osamu Dazai's world. If Masamichi Yaga had progressed from cautious probing to the occasional bolder attempt, then whether it was Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, or Shoko Ieiri, Osamu Dazai had kept them all at a perfectly reasonable yet distinctly distant remove.

It was as though Osamu Dazai knew everything about them, while they knew almost nothing about him.

Let alone Suguru Geto, even Masamichi Yaga might never have seen this side of him, steeped in darkness.

Why say that? Because at that moment, Masamichi Yaga's eyes were filled with utter bewilderment.

Although he was too overwhelmed to speak, his lowered eyes were still brimming with sorrow.

Just as he had once thought, he could reach out to someone trapped deep in the darkness. But after that person had taken care of everything for them, he had resolutely leaped into the abyss once more.

Perhaps he had never been there at all. Perhaps I had never noticed.

Masamichi Yaga was extraordinarily calm, and extraordinarily sad. He hadn't even felt this much grief when Osamu Dazai died.

Those emotions were forcibly trapped in his mind. At that moment, Masamichi Yaga's brain could barely function normally, and even his breathing grew somewhat rapid.

Do I understand him? Masamichi Yaga asked himself with a touch of cruelty.

I've always considered him my proudest student, but have I ever truly reached the depths of his heart?

Still, if he himself had been there, perhaps he would have been happy. After all, not a single person would condemn Osamu Dazai for killing someone.

Unlike the storm sweeping through the Jujutsu High group, Toji Zenin remained exceptionally calm. He had seen Osamu Dazai in even crazier states.

Flawless in his calculations, ruthless in his methods, indifferent and mad-Toji couldn't see through what sort of person Osamu Dazai truly was.

But he wasn't a good man. Toji Zenin had known that perfectly well from the start.

Only that bunch at Jujutsu High could live safely under Osamu Dazai's protection without ever encountering his true nature.

And when it came to a useful blade whose feelings needn't concern him, Osamu Dazai had always wielded it without restraint.

As the Port Mafia's former youngest executive and its newly appointed boss, Osamu Dazai's methods needed no further explanation.

He could easily destroy someone in both body and spirit, and he could calmly watch anyone die before his eyes. Unfortunately, Osamu Dazai had no particularly good blades at hand, so Toji Zenin, the only reasonably decent one, had been kept at his side.

If Toji Zenin were asked to offer an assessment, he would probably say only this.

"Ah, that's the boss for you. A man whose blood runs black to his very bones. Of course he'd have been like that even as a boy."