Extra 10 (Watching Boss Dazai's Life)

As for Satoru Gojo, Suguru Geto, and Shoko, unlike Toji Zenin and Masamichi Yaga, who had spent the most time with Osamu Dazai, they did not know him nearly as well and took this revelation in stride.

None of them were fools. They might have been shocked, but even Suguru Geto, once the most steadfast defender of justice, had been changing through his repeated conversations with Osamu Dazai, Satoru Gojo's brainwashing, and the laws and regulations.

[Inside a villa with a fire burning in the fireplace, a long-haired man sat shivering.

"It's so cold. The room's draftier now. I feel three times colder than before," he said, his voice sounding faint and unsteady.

"What rotten luck, Rimbaud."

Osamu Dazai walked into the half-burned villa with Chūya Nakahara. Looking at the man sitting upright in a chair, hugging himself and shivering, Dazai spoke.

"Why am I the unlucky one?" Rimbaud complained, sounding somewhat distressed.

"I can more or less guess why you were attacked. It was to spread rumors. If Mr. Rimbaud, a supporter of Ōgai Mori, died in a black explosion, it would make the former Boss's anger feel all the more real to everyone else."

Osamu Dazai spoke with utter indifference, as though his own life were not caught up in this incident.

"Before we came here, this guy took out quite a few GSS soldiers. I found instructions on one of them for disguising this explosion as a black explosion."

Osamu Dazai quietly reached out, pulled a sheet of paper from somewhere, and held it up beside him.

"What's a black explosion?" Rimbaud turned his head quietly.

"Using the flame-color reaction of a sodium lamp can make flames appear black. At the end of the day, it's just a childish trick." Osamu Dazai casually crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it away, keeping his eyes on Rimbaud.

"That's about the size of it," Chūya Nakahara replied calmly, his hands in his pockets.

"So those GSS bastards pretended to be Arahabaki and attacked this old guy to stir up infighting in the Port Mafia?"

"The GSS commander is a cold-hearted man. They say he has close ties with a secret organization in North America, the Guild."

Rimbaud spoke casually, until Osamu Dazai calmly asked his next question.

"Rimbaud, tell me everything you saw on Suribachi Street concerning Arahabaki."

"This last matter is connected to the former Boss's resurrection."

"Ah..." Rimbaud pondered, cold sweat beginning to seep from his forehead without his realizing it. The beads slowly rolled down his cheeks, and his eyes widened as though he had seen something deeply unpleasant.

"I remember it clearly. How could I ever forget? I barely escaped with my life."

"But the men around me were all swallowed by black flames and burned to ashes in the end. That truly was the Wild God."

"This case is getting more and more interesting." Osamu Dazai smiled. His tousled hair and the bandages covering his right eye concealed all his emotions, but the upward curve of his lips still offered a glimpse of the feelings hidden beneath his facade.]

"So this guy really had it rough. Not only did his house get blown up, someone wanted him dead, and he'd already witnessed that explosion himself before. Talk about rotten luck."

Yuji Itadori scratched his head and calmly offered his assessment of the person in the film, adding that he had seen people with equally miserable lives in other movies before, and most of them did not get happy endings.

"Both the Guild and GSS are worth keeping an eye on-"

Satoru Gojo drew out the last syllable. In truth, he had remained on high alert the entire time, committing every detail of the film to memory. Just as they had said at the start, not one of the adults believed this was merely a coincidence or an accident, or that a Book simply wanted to invite people to watch another world.

So, aside from the somewhat more innocent children, who sensed something was wrong but still treated it as a movie, the scheming adults had all tacitly agreed to keep the matter from them.

Children did not need to understand the adult world all that well, just as Osamu Dazai had once said in this world.

You're not strong enough yet. Although those words were a crushing psychological blow to anyone with self-respect.

There was no denying that they worked.

All the children needed to do was accept the adults' protection. Doing their best to stay alive was the greatest gift they could give them.

["Tell us more."

"It happened near the center of Suribachi Street. The Port Mafia was heading into battle against the Sheep's armed youths when a black explosion suddenly blasted all of us away."

The scene changed. Rimbaud knelt on one knee alone within a space, the wind ceaselessly buffeting everything around him as though intent on throwing the entire world into chaos. Soon, even the space itself began to crack. Black lines tinged with red light swirled endlessly throughout the frame.

"The explosion came so suddenly that I could only use my Ability to protect myself."

"Black flames, shattered earth-it was hell itself, and he stood at its center. That wasn't the former Boss. No... he wasn't even human."

Rimbaud's recollection ended there, but cold sweat continued to drip down his face. He frowned slightly and went on.

"He was a beast, a beast burning with black flames. Even his eyes were like flames gushing out of hell. Everything on the ground warped in the intense heat.

Except for the sea off Yokohama. Looking into the distance, only that sea, filled with moonlight, remained so peaceful. I remember that sea especially clearly."

Osamu Dazai was still smiling, the corners of his lips raised. His eyes remained hidden, yet a hint of emotion could still be glimpsed. Whether it was genuine or false was impossible to tell.

"Then I heard the beast howl. Its cry was cold and merciless. I was afraid of that sound. I'm sorry. You want to prove that Arahabaki didn't resurrect the former Boss, and that the former Boss was merely an enemy Ability user in disguise."

Rimbaud quietly rose from his chair and turned to look at the two boys standing behind him.

"No, I think there's more to what you're saying. I understand now. Thanks to what you've told us, the case is solved."

Osamu Dazai said it with his eyes slightly closed and a smile on his face.

As for Chūya Nakahara beside him-

"Huh?" His mouth fell open, his eyes wide as he stared blankly at Osamu Dazai, apparently unable to understand just what Dazai had figured out.]

"Just like that, the case is solved?" Panda was bewildered. He had long known that his brain did not work the same way as Osamu Dazai's, but he had solved the case just by listening? Didn't he need to think it over? And if he had solved it, couldn't he at least explain?

"So that's it." Masamichi Yaga, who had rarely spoken during the screening, fell silent for a moment before nodding and uttering those words. He offered no further comment.

"Huh?" Panda looked blankly at the man he regarded as his father and watched him turn into yet another person speaking in riddles.

Of course, Masamichi Yaga had not figured it out at first either. But among everyone present, he understood and knew Osamu Dazai best. Although Dazai's true nature remained difficult to grasp, when it came to reading his expressions, Yaga was unbeatable.

So even Mr. Dazai, who had grown into a gentle, courteous man, sometimes struggled to escape Masamichi Yaga's absurdly sharp intuition, let alone this little fifteen-year-old Dazai.

Thus, relying solely on his familiarity with Osamu Dazai, Masamichi Yaga could quickly pick up on something unusual about him, pinpoint Rimbaud's preceding remark, and narrow his thinking to that statement. From there, reaching the answer was easy.

As for Suguru Geto and Satoru Gojo, they had initially been waiting for Masamichi Yaga's explanation. Once they realized he had no intention of explaining anything, they fell silent, leaned their heads together, and began talking in low voices.

"There must be something Dazai had already thought of," Suguru Geto mused, recalling what he might have missed.

"Hmm... what did that guy say again? Explosion, flames, hell, the ground, and the sea?"

Drawing on his exceptional memory, Satoru Gojo recalled the man's words sentence by sentence, until the word "sea" came up.

"Satoru, if I remember right, the Suribachi Street they mentioned is a crater, isn't it?"

"And a really deep one at that. So that man couldn't possibly have known."

"So that's it!"

"That explains it."

Their voices had been very quiet at first, but by those last two remarks, they had returned to their usual volume.

That also left everyone else silent at once, whether they had been vaguely considering it, had figured it out, or had not.

"So what is it, exactly?" Yuji Itadori had actually already forgotten what had just been said in the movie, but when he asked the question, not a single person answered him.

Yuji Itadori: ... I feel like I'm being left out.