Extra 9 (Watching Boss Dazai's Life)

[As darkness welled up within Osamu Dazai and he kept firing at the already dead man, Chūya Nakahara kicked the gun out of his hand.

The impact made Osamu Dazai's body tilt slightly as well.

"Don't waste bullets on a corpse." Chūya Nakahara frowned at Osamu Dazai.

"Yes, you're right."

Osamu Dazai's expression returned to indifference in an instant, as though the frenzied man from a moment ago and the calm man now were two entirely different people.

Bandages and strands of hair concealed his eyes, making his emotions impossible to read. He did not look at Chūya Nakahara beside him, silently heading toward the villa.

"I suppose you're right. Most people would probably think that."]

When all was said and done, who among those present could claim to truly understand Osamu Dazai?

What sort of person was he? Most of them had at least some idea. None of them were fools, after all. Even his apparent fondness for suicide alone made it clear that he was very different from other people.

But who could guarantee that what they saw was not simply what Osamu Dazai wanted them to see?

No one.

Not even Toji Zenin could. Even someone like him, who fell entirely outside Osamu Dazai's protection, whose death would not shake Osamu Dazai in the slightest, never got to see his true self.

He had considered that question long ago, but he had never cared about the answer. After all, even in Toji Zenin's own eyes, he was nothing more than a barely serviceable blade.

Casually prying into the boss's affairs, especially a boss like Osamu Dazai, could get you killed with one careless misstep.

He understood that better than anyone, so his view of Osamu Dazai came closer to who the man actually was.

After all, when two people were bound only by interests and not by emotions, they viewed each other with the greatest clarity.

Right now, for instance, among everyone who knew Osamu Dazai, he alone could remain calm and watch from the sidelines, treating the entire affair as a film without letting it disrupt his own emotions.

But for Osamu Dazai, was it not also a good thing to have known the ending and understood the future from the very beginning?

After all, a clever person would never want what came next to fall outside the bounds of his calculations.

"I don't get what you're all so sad about."

Toji Zenin's words were utterly flat. His gaze was almost contemptuous as he looked at Masamichi Yaga, whose emotions had fluctuated the most.

Masamichi Yaga was a good teacher. He was resolute enough. He had chosen Osamu Dazai and was willing to keep giving of himself for that choice.

He firmly believed that Osamu Dazai was a good kid, so no matter how many tests the boy threw at him, he accepted them all.

But after meeting Osamu Dazai, what Masamichi Yaga experienced most was not fear, but heartache.

His heart ached for the boy, still a minor when they met, who had become so painfully troubled after going through who knew what.

His heart ached for such a clever, good kid, tentatively slipping out his claws to scratch him, as if to say, I'm not worth loving. Let go of me. Throw me away. Leave me to fend for myself.

How could his heart not ache?

Never underestimate the worldly experience of a teacher, of an adult. Even a prodigy could fall a little short of others in that regard. That experience had been accumulated through trial and error over decades more than they had lived.

As it happened, Masamichi Yaga was no genius, but neither his intelligence nor his abilities were lacking. In his twenties, he had already established himself as the foremost figure in the jujutsu puppet world. Before the Gojo Clan's Six Eyes appeared, Grade 1 Jujutsu Sorcerers had been exceedingly rare-to be precise, they still were. He, too, had survived all those years of trials.

His broad experience, along with one brush with life and death after another, also allowed Masamichi Yaga to work his way a little closer to Osamu Dazai.

As for why he trusted so unwaveringly that Osamu Dazai was a good kid?

In truth, Masamichi Yaga did not quite know either. There was simply a hint of intuition that the boy was crying for help, unconsciously reaching out with one hand while struggling to sink himself into the darkness.

However he looked at it, it made his heart ache. And at the time, Masamichi Yaga had the ability to reach out to someone else. That was all.

That alone was enough to make Masamichi Yaga desperately want to pull the boy ashore.

"If one day you discovered that you didn't understand Megumi at all."

In a rare response, Masamichi Yaga said those words, then closed his eyes briefly and fixed his gaze on the blank, black screen, no longer listening to another word Toji Zenin said.