The Day I Picked Up Dazai

Story by: Asagiri Kafka

Illustrated by: Harukawa35
Translated by: DarkestJay868 (Typesetting for colored pages: @bsd_edits!)
(NOTE: This is an unofficial fan translation. All rights are reserved to the respective owners. Buy the
book here - 【最新刊】文豪ストレイドッグス 太宰を拾った日 - ライトノベル（ラノベ） 朝霧カフカ/春河３５（角川ビー
ンズ文庫）：電子書籍試し読み無料 - BOOK☆WALKER - (bookwalker.jp))
 Side - A

Lying on my front porch was a young man’s bloodied corpse.

I looked down at the corpse before looking in front of my house.

The morning was quiet. The apartment complex in front of my house cast long, black
shadows over the pavement. Trumpet creepers that were growing from a hedge
rustled in the wind, whispering to each other about things humans couldn’t hear.
Somewhere in the distance, I heard the scraping sound of a semi-truck driving along a
road.

And halfway up the steps in front of me was a corpse.

A corpse, no matter the situation, would look strangely out of place just sitting there.
But this time was different. The corpse blended in with the scenery, becoming one
with the peaceful daily activities of the morning.

I soon realized the reason why. The corpse’s chest lifted up and down ever so slightly.

The corpse wasn’t a corpse at all―it was alive.

I looked at the young man. He had black everything, from pitch black disheveled hair
to a black suit and necktie. His undershirt was the only thing not black, and he had
bandages wrapped around his head. Flecks of red were littered across the white
bandages. The pattern reminded me of some ominous, prophetic Chinese literature.
He was lying on the front of my porch that led up to the middle of the stairs. There was
a trail of blood on the cracked, concrete stairs, as if he had crawled his way up them.

This was a problem. So, I came up with an answer for what I should do with this
near-corpse right in front of my eyes.

It was simple. If I only touched him with my toes and pushed him, he’d roll down the
stairs and hit the ground. That way, he would be on the sidewalk instead of at my
house. On state property. Those who find themselves with troubling circumstances on
state property should be helped by the state. Those of us like me, an ordinary mailman,
who should be returning home to eat his breakfast.

Well, I’m a cold and merciless human being, so I probably shouldn't do that. It’s a
necessary matter of survival. The wounds the young man sustained were obviously
gun-inflicted. He looked as if he were shot all over his body and was probably filled
with holes that I couldn’t immediately see. To top it all off, he was clutching a bundle of
banknotes in his left hand.

What’s the meaning of all of this? Nothing. The fact that he’s here at my porch is a huge
nuisance, and if I ignore the feeling I get that if I get involved with him something
awful will happen, there’s no meaning to any of this.

Basically, he is obviously someone an ordinary citizen like me should not get involved
with. Had I been someone with a typical conscience, I probably would have run to the
nearest town the minute I saw him. Kind of like Jonah in the Bible, happening across
the giant fish on the stormy seas for a second time.

I looked at the young man, then to the street, then to the sky, and back at the young
man.

That’s when I started to move. First, I grabbed him under his armpits and lifted him
up. His heels drug behind him as I carried him into my house and laid him down onto
my Murphy bed. He was a lot lighter than he looked, so it was easy enough to do by
myself. Next, I inspected his wounds. There were a lot of them, they were deep, and he
was bleeding heavily—but if I quickly gave him proper medical treatment, he wouldn’t
die.

I took out some medical supplies from the depths of my closet and gave him
emergency first-aid. I put down a towel underneath his upper body, made a cut in his
clothes so I could see the wounds, and made sure there were no bullets left. In order to
stop the bleeding, I pressed down against the bullet wounds—under his arms, behind
his elbows, his ankles, and knees—and tightly fastened a sanitized cloth to them. From
his perspective, this might’ve seemed like difficult work, but I could do this much
emergency aid with my eyes closed.
With the treatment finished, I crossed my arms and looked down at the young man.
His breathing was stable. Looks like his respiratory organs weren’t damaged, nor did
he have any broken bones. But his eyes were still closed. A commanding voice inside of
my head was telling me to hurry up and dump him somewhere. “There’s nothing
stupider than patching up someone as suspicious as him”, it said. I should probably
listen to the voice. That’s what a smart person would do.

Before I followed my little angel’s advice, I observed the young man one more time.

I don’t remember his face, so he couldn’t be an acquaintance. Or I think so anyways, it

was hard to tell since half of his face was covered in bandages. Also, he seemed
younger than I initially thought. It might be more accurate to call him a boy than a
young man.

Then I remembered the bank notes he was holding. Even now, he was still holding
them. If the amount was as much as it seemed, it was a fortune compared to someone
like me who earned a low monthly salary. Given the circumstances of me saving his
life, I figured a good thanks would be to gently take the money into my pocket. With
that in mind, I grabbed the bank notes and started flipping through them.

And that’s when I finally realized I was the biggest idiot in town.

A bitter taste spread through my mouth.

This was a bundle of banknotes that hadn’t once been in circulation. There may have
been flecks of blood here and there, but the certified strap around it was good as new.
Where the name of the bank should have been printed was blank. There wasn’t any
writing on it, in fact.
To top it off, the bills were neatly arranged in serial order.

I felt like I’d been violently punched in the gut.

I came up with two possibilities. One was that this wad of banknotes came from a
reserve bank within the Minting Bureau, so it hadn’t been circulated through the city
yet. That would mean this boy is an angel of death1. It’s simply not even a possibility for
a normal human to get their hands on something like that. Banknotes that are printed
at the Minting Bureau are first sent to the Ministry of Finance, where their serial
numbers are scanned and the bills can become usable. Afterwards, the money is sent
in an armored transport vehicle to a branch of the reserve bank. From there, the bills
are divided up even further and distributed to the city banks. Only at that point are the
straps replaced with the city banks’.

But his strap had nothing on it. For it to look like that, he had to have taken it when it
was being transported from the reserve bank. Thinking about it more, it would have to
be a surprise robbery.

Had he been on his way back from that assault?

If that was the case, I would probably breathe a deep sigh of relief, smooth out my
shirt, and go back to the kitchen to finish brewing my coffee. Car jackers and the like
might be violent—but they were just that. Violence alone couldn’t brew up a storm.

Then there was the other possibility.

These bills were counterfeit.

I grabbed a magnifying glass from the back of my room and closely examined the wad
of bills. My fingertips went numbingly cold. I grabbed some bills from my wallet and
lined them up side by side. I couldn’t discern a difference.

A supernote.

I felt dizzy.

Now that the situation has escalated, the bills I was holding onto morphed into a
dangerous good no different than a mini nuclear bomb.

1
Here, Odasaku uses the derogatory term “Yakubyougami”, which is literally translated as “God of the
Plague”, but can mean, “angel of death, pest, plague of a person, or odious”. I decided to go with angel of
death, but any of these translations will fit.
Counterfeit money has been a tool of war from even before bows and arrows. If you
can circulate a well-made counterfeit currency, the amount of money going around
rises while the value of it drops, causing inflation. A country is its currency. If you
could incite distrust in currency, the economy would collapse and with that, an entire
nation would be destroyed.

That’s why countries’ national security are constantly on the lookout for counterfeit
money.

If a counterfeit bill that looked this believable started circulating, it wouldn’t be the city
police that’d get involved. It’d be those even higher. Like the national security
organizations, or the military.

I practically threw the wad of bills on my desk. I didn’t want to leave any more
fingerprints on them than I already have. Then I turned to the phone. If I immediately
made a report, I might be able to claim some extenuating circumstances to the
authorities.

When I picked up the receiver, I heard a raspy voice coming from outside of the phone.

“Put the phone down.”

I turned my head towards the voice. At some point the boy had opened his eyes, and
had only turned them to me.

I looked between the boy and the receiver, then said, “And what happens if I don’t?”

“I’ll kill you.”

Those words were as uninspiring as a pack of unsold leftovers lined up at a market. At

least when they were uttered by this young boy. One look at his eyes and you could tell
that those were simply words he used in his everyday life, the same way people clipped
their nails or went out to buy more cigarettes.
“How?” I took the receiver away from my ear, but I didn’t put it back into the machine.
“Your entire body is riddled with bullet holes, you can’t even move, and you’re on the
verge of dying. Not to mention, you don’t have a gun. For you to try to kill me in that
condition, there’d need to be two hundred of you.” I said.

“There’s no need for that.” The boy’s voice suddenly took on a frightening tone. “I’m
with the Port Mafia.”

That was all he needed to say.

“The Port Mafia.” I chose my words very carefully. “In that case, I have no choice but to
listen.”

I took my time putting the receiver down, slowly and quietly.

“That’s good.” The boy let out a thin laugh.

If he truly was with the Port Mafia, I had to be careful even raising or lowering a spoon
in front of him. Even if I managed to escape today after making a report, when my
opponent is the Port Mafia—who’s the embodiment of violence and darkness—there’s
no telling what would come back to haunt me later. A human has around two hundred
bones in their bodies, but it wouldn’t be an understatement to say I could be sliced up
into about as many pieces of flesh.

I stared at my opponent for, give-or-take, three seconds before turning towards the
kitchen. I kept the door open so I could keep an eye on the boy in the other room.

Then, I started to make coffee. I put a kettle over a fire and wet the rod. After the water
boiled, I added the ground coffee in a pot and poured the water over it.

“If you don’t want me to call the police, then how about a doctor?” I said while keeping
my gaze fixed on the water. “All I did was an emergency treatment. You should
probably get checked out by a professional, or you’ll die.”
“There’s no reason for you to worry.” The boy spoke as if he had been stretched thin.
“I’m used to injuries like this, it’s no big deal.”

“Is that so? Then I’ll do as you say.” I stirred the coffee and set a timer. “In any case, it’s
not like an ordinary mailman like me could go up against the demons of the Port
Mafia.”

“That’s why you should just listen to me. Next—”

Just then, the boy erupted in a violent coughing fit, throwing up blood.

I rushed over to him, turning his neck the other way so he wouldn’t choke on his own
blood.

I checked the inside of his mouth, but I couldn’t tell where the blood was coming from.
It could have simply been a cut inside of his mouth, or it could be an internal injury. I
didn’t know.

“Go to the hospital, get treatment for your injuries. You really are going to die.” I said.

“Good.” The boy said, his voice no more than a whisper. “Just leave me to die.”

A chilling wind passed through me.

I looked at the boy. He was staring at the wall of my room, his face emotionless and
without any connotation. He just looked calm, as if all he did was tell me his age.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It didn’t even feel like there was a human in front of me.
Had it been the dead of night and not bright and early in the morning, I would have
mistaken him for an apparition, or a hallucination.

Today is turning into an absurd day. I have a feeling my life is about to get complicated.
“That’s fine,” I said. “If you want to die, go for it. It’s your life, who am I to stop you?
But it’d be a real problem if you died right here. There’s no one around to give evidence
that I wasn’t the one who injured you. I’d be arrested.”

“Would you rather be arrested or killed by the mafia?”

I stared, studying him, while saying, “That’s a tough question.”

With that, I walked back into the kitchen and took the coffee off the heat. Then, while
grabbing the can of cream, I asked him, “Do you drink coffee?”

No answer.

“Why did you collapse in front of my house?”

Again, no answer.

“What the hell is with those banknotes in your hand?”

And even still, he gave no reply.

It was starting to feel like I was having a conversation with some kind of fairy. Like a
character in a picture book who suddenly showed up at my house on this peaceful
morning. Except he was covered in blood and desperate to die.

I poured two cups of coffee and put cream in both of them. I stared at the steam rising
up from the cups and waited before stirring them. That’s when I realized it was awfully
quiet in the room next to me. I couldn’t hear a single breath, nor did I pick up on any
signs of death.

Holding the cups of coffee, I poked my head around the door.

The boy was crawling his way towards the front door. Had he been able to move his
legs, he probably would have just walked out, though it looks like he hadn’t regained
enough strength for that. So he threw his arms on the floor and continued crawling
forward like a prisoner escaping in an old war film.

Noticing my gaze, the boy let a jeering smile find its way to his lips, as if he had given
up. Then he said, “It’d be a problem if I died in your house, right? If I left, it wouldn’t be
your problem anymore. There’s no need to be worried or help me out. In fact, it’s fine
if you just want to watch.”

“You want to die that much?” I said while holding the coffee.

“Of course I do. Even though I joined the Port Mafia, I still haven’t found anything.”
The boy said in a wheeze, as if his very soul had been wrung out of him. “The only
thing I wish for now is death.”

And he continued forward.

I looked at the sight before me as I sipped my coffee. The boy was moving forward so
slowly, it was pathetic. I took another sip of my coffee. He continued on mercilessly
and seemed to have already forgotten I was watching him.

There was only one thing I could do.

“It’s pointless to stop me.” The boy must’ve guessed what I planned to do, for he said
that to me while stubbornly looking forward. “No one can oppose the Port Mafia. And
since I’m a part of the mafia, no one can oppose me. All to say there’s nobody who
can—uwooaaaahhh?!!”

I pulled the boy back in the opposite direction.

I lifted the boy up after wrapping him in my bed sheets. I tied both ends of the sheets
in the same fashion as a candy wrapper and turned him upside down, carrying him to
the other side of the room.

“Owwwowowow!! It hurts! My wounds opened up! What the hell are you doing, you big
oaf, do you wanna be killed?!!”
“I don’t want to be killed. But it’d be a problem if you died, too. If you go out in that
state, you’re definitely going to die. When you get better, you can create a different
story of death. One in which I don’t make an appearance.”

The boy looked like he was still going to give me trouble, so I shook the lump of sheets.

“Aaaggghhh, fuck, that hurts!! Quit it! I hate feeling pain!!”

“Do you yield to your fate?”

“I don’t!!”

I start thinking of ways to deal with this problem when it hits me—I’ll tie him to the
bed.

I set the boy down on the bed and opened up the sheets he was encased in. I grabbed
the wide towel from earlier, crossed his arms in front of his chest, and wrapped his
entire body in it. After grabbing a decorative cord from the front door, I bound his legs
together and tied it to the metal fixtures on my bed. Then, I raised the pillows a bit,
replaced my comforter with a new one, and opened up the window to let in some fresh
air.

“For now, until your wounds close up again, I’m going to ask you to stay like this.” I
said while looking down at him. “Is there anything you want?”

“My nose is itchy.” The boy glared at me with reproach as he squirmed around, trying
to move his bound arms.

“That sucks.” I walked back into the kitchen to drink my coffee.

The boy started saying all kinds of foul things behind my back. But the houses in this
neighborhood are spread out, so I didn’t have to worry about him being a nuisance to
others. I went back to enjoying my morning coffee.
Thus began a brief, but strange daily life for both Dazai and I.

⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪

Dazai was the strangest boy I’d ever met.

His eyes remind me of a black cat that’s burned to death, his body reminds me of a
black cat that’s burned to death, and his aura reminds me of a black cat that’s burned
to death. The tone of his voice seemed to show that his spirit was sinking into the pits
of Hell, and his dark eyes seemed to harbor a deep conviction that the sun shall never
rise again. He didn’t speak very much, and when he did you could tell that, from the
very beginning, he understood there was a deep rift separating him of mutual
understanding. There was no one that could understand him, there would never be
anyone that could understand him, and this was a fact that he himself understood
quite well. That’s the kind of voice he had.

It seemed like he truly did want to die. In his eyes, the worth that came with survival
was ugly and pointless—like shavings of iron. I still didn’t know the reason why.
Truthfully, that day would probably never come. This was something even he appeared
to understand. That’s why he tried to leave. The only way for him to stop the pain of
his injuries and get the “big sleep” he oh-so desired was to leave my house. But I
interfered with his attempts to escape, which even cut him off from death.

And so, Dazai was going to flood me with complaints until the bitter end.

He really did have a lot of complaints. Whether it was his meals, his sleeping
arrangements, or what he did to pass the time—he mercilessly criticized my care and
abused me with insults. There wasn’t a single thing I did that escaped his ruthlessness.
He was just like a tyrannical emperor. I’d hardly find it strange if I started sobbing like
a nine-year-old girl.
But the truth was, I was totally indifferent. Why, you might ask? Because I knew his
criticisms were all a performance based on what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to
get so upset with him, so tired of him, that I didn’t care what happened to him
anymore and threw him onto my front porch again. With that, he would win. That’s
why I didn’t let anything he said bother me. In reality, he probably felt deeply amazed
at how well I was taking care of him.

For example, something like this would happen:

“Hey, you! The porridge is hot! You expect me to eat it like this?!”

“I’m being serious, the porridge is way too hot! You know my hands are tied up so I
can’t eat it, right? Wait a minute, like I said—don’t force it into my mouth…Hof! Iths
hof!!”

“I’m eahing it, I’m eahing it, ok?! Don’t give me another one! Wa… Wait, don’t… I can’t
mo…Gyaaaahhh my eye! It went into my eye! It’s so hot!! It huuuuurrrts!!!”

“Listen…Can’t you do something about the twice a day limit on the toilet? Even the
Port Mafia’s prisoners have a little more freedom than that…”

“I know I said to ease my boredom, but is reading me a book really something you
should do for someone my age? Plus, it’s the same book! And the last few pages are
missing so I don’t know how it ends! Is this torture? Is this a new form of torture?!”

It was a very realistic performance.

I paid no attention to his antics and simply continued to take care of him.

My persistence was rewarded when a few days later, Dazai said to me in a raspy voice
and dead, listless eyes, “There’s no use… He doesn’t understand… This man is
naturally airheaded…”
I didn’t quite understand what he meant by that but, from that point onwards, he
calmed down a little and obeyed my instructions.

That’s when Dazai switched up his tactics. Rather than mumbling about the way I
cared for him, he became quite picky with his food, specifically with certain
ingredients. I guess his goal was to make a fuss no matter what, but I was a man with
both patience and consistency. I was also a practical person who knew that, for
someone with both of their arms bound to prevent them from escaping, they would
need an appropriate distraction. So, I became a kind chef.

His first demand was puffer fish sashimi. A rare ingredient indeed. I went to look for it
at the local fish market, but the owner said to me, “Are you an idiot2?” So I gave up.
Next, he asked for roasted mushrooms, but specifically the “destroying angel3”. It
looked like a beautifully white mushroom. I went to the nearby mountains to look for
it, but turned up with nothing. Since it was something the locals knew not to eat under
any circumstance, I thought there would be plenty of it in the countryside.
Unfortunately, I was wrong. When I fed him stir fry of some of the wild plants I
stumbled upon on my way back, he merely stared at me with a murderous gleam in his
eyes and said, “It’s good.”

And finally, he requested a sprouted potato salad4. This one was fairly easy to get my
hands on since the ingredient I needed could be found on another common ingredient,
but I didn’t have time to wait for all of them to sprout. I ended up not having enough,
so I had to give it to him as a sandwich instead of a salad. Dazai was strangely happy
while eating it, but later that night he was screaming, “It wasn’t enough…!” while
vomiting profusely and writhing in pain. To want to eat something that much despite it
making you vomit…I wondered if it was his favorite food. At that moment, all my hard
work had paid off.

On a different day, I received this complaint:

2
Puffer fish are lethal to humans
3
ドクツルタケ — Amanita Virosa, otherwise known as the European destroying angel, is a deadly
poisonous fungus
4
The sprouts that grow on potatoes contain high levels of glycoalkaloids, which can be toxic to humans
when eaten in excess
“Listen, I already know you don’t have any ulterior motives behind taking care of me or
whatever,” Dazai said while waving his finally-free arms around. For the record, I kept
his feet chained to the bed. “But I have way too much free time! I’m not allowed to read
or call anybody, there’s no TV or background noise to listen to, the only thing you have
is an abundance of vinyls! I have those songs memorized to the point where I could
probably perform them tomorrow…Isn’t there anything else? Like proper
entertainment?”

“Nope.”

“Well, that was fast… How the hell do you live your day to day like this…” Dazai stared
at me with a horrified look.

“Then how about we play a game?” I sat down on a chair in the room. “Thankfully, the
previous owners left some playing cards behind.”

“I know, I saw them on top of the bookshelf.” Dazai said, dubiousness evident on his
face. “But I’m not a ten-year-old anymore, playing cards isn’t really entertaining for
me.”

“Then shall we liven it up a bit and bet on something?” I said while taking the cards out
of their box.

Almost instantly, Dazai’s eyes gleamed sharply, like a knife. “Hmm. Do you even have
anything you could bet with? You don’t seem like the type to have a bunch of money
lying around.”

He was right—I didn’t have a lot of money.

“Then how about this?” I took some chess pieces off of the shelf and lined up sixteen
white pieces and sixteen black pieces across from each other. “Let’s play poker with
these as our chips. The rules will be a Texas Hold’em ring game. The small blind will be
one piece, the big blind two pieces. There’s no bet limit. If you manage to take all of my
pieces, you win the right to freely leave my house.”
“Is that so?” Dazai narrowed his eyes. “You sure about that? You sound pretty
confident. What happens if you win? Do I give you all of my hidden assets?”

“There’s no reason for you to bet on anything that’s not currently here. Besides, I don’t
have a way to check how much your assets are.”

“Then these counterfeit—”

“I definitely don’t need those.” I pushed back the hand Dazai held all the banknotes in.
So they were counterfeit notes. “I’ve got an idea. Whenever you lose sixteen pieces, you
have to give up one of your secrets. How about that?”

“Secrets, huh?” Dazai said with a little laugh. “You put some thought into this.”

I proposed this purely out of selfishness.

The problem I have right now is that once Dazai is healed and released, there’s a
possibility he might come back for revenge. And I have nothing to protect myself with.
There isn’t a wall high enough in this world that can protect you from the Port Mafia’s
retaliation. In that case, I need some insurance. Or at the very least, something that
can pass as insurance.
If I can just find out his true identity, what his plans were, or his secrets, that’ll give me
an aid to protect myself with. Of course, there’s no way for me to prove any secret I
heard, so this was just for peace of mind. And the more secrets I knew, the better I’d
feel.

“Haha, interesting. You’re planning to hoard my secrets, are you?” A twisted smile
forced its way onto Dazai’s face. “It’s been so long since there was a person that was
determined to beat me.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling up to it.” I said while dealing out the cards. “Are you ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

I dealt out two cards in front of me and two cards in front of Dazai, all face down.
Heads Up. Pre-flop. Before I checked my cards’ numbers, Dazai said to me, “You seem
like a fair person, so I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

“A secret?”

“You might’ve been the one to suggest this game, but I was the one who guided you to
it.” Dazai looked at me with a deep calmness. “I knew that there were cards on the
bookshelf, and there didn’t seem to be any other way to kill time. Neither of us had
much to bet with, so it was obvious that sooner or later we’d settle on my freedom. If
we decided on anything else, I would have grumbled and complained. So, just like that,
I managed to draw this game out of you.”

“I see.” I stared at my opponent. “I take it you also plan to win?”

“Yup.” Dazai said with a smile that could pierce through the darkness on his face. “I’ve
never lost at a game like this.”

There wasn’t a hint of joking or bluffing in his voice. He was serious.

“That’s why,” Dazai said while pushing a piece representing a small blind forward.
“You’ll be waiting an eternity before you get any secrets from me.”

⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪

Thirty minutes later.

“The passcode for the Port Mafia’s emergency arms vault is…7280285E…”

Dazai had a blank look on his face as he laid his head sideways on the table.

“You really do have a lot of secrets, don’t you?” I said with admiration.
“Well, obviously! I’m the head of the special task force under the boss’s direct
supervision!” Dazai groaned. “Uggghhhh, what the hell is this?! I’ve given away almost
all of my personal secrets! How humiliating…!”

We’ve played eighteen rounds, and I’ve won every single one of them. I know where he
lives, his subordinates abilities, when he joined the mafia, the total amount of money
he currently has, what job he’s currently doing in the mafia, his favorite foods, where
hidden cash vaults are at, the fact that the current boss named Mori used to be an
underground doctor…

All eighteen secrets that Dazai has told have been so oddly specific that I can’t help but
believe he’s actually some higher up within the mafia. In fact, I think I’ve heard too
much. There probably wasn’t anyone alive who knew the personal history of the Port
Mafia’s boss, Yokohama’s Taishan Fujun5. What happened to those who were still alive
after learning about him was another matter entirely.

Dazai’s head fell on the desk in distress. Seems like he did have a lot of confidence
when starting this game.

“You…cheated, didn’t you?”

Dazai gazed at me with a look as sticky as mud. I tilted my head to the side.

“Cheated?”

“I only noticed it halfway through. You have an ability that lets you see how the game
was going to go. I ignored it at first because I thought it wouldn’t work on me. But if
you weren’t using your ability on me and instead used it for the situation, that would
explain your disgusting way to predict the future.”

“Sorry. I wasn’t particularly trying to hide it.” I said while shuffling the cards.

5
Dongyue Dadi, or Taishun Fujun in Buddhist scriptures, is a Chinese Daoist deity who judges what realm
of Saṃsāra a person will be reborn in. He is also believed to be the leader of a large bureaucratic
celestial ministry overseeing the maintenance of the Book of Life (生死簿), a register of the due dates on
which each and every human soul must be summoned before the Judges of Hell for judgment.
My ability lets me predict the near future. I can see a little farther than five seconds,
but no longer than six seconds. Because of that, I could see everything—from the
outcome of the next hand, to the next bet to be made, to the numbers on the cards.

On extremely rare occasions when I’m hurting for money, I’ll go to the nearby casino
and use my ability to win some easy money before heading home.

“That wasn’t very fair of me.” I admitted honestly. “I’ve never lost a game like this
before, just like you. Here, let’s count that last match invalid. From the beginning, I was
really only looking for a way to help you pass the time.”

“We can’t just count it as invalid!” Dazai looked at me in protest. “Even if we wanted to!
Information isn’t money, you can’t just give it back to me! So, now what? You’re telling
me you can completely forget all the information I’ve given you at will?”

“If that’s the only way, then I’ll try my best.”

“Huh….?” Dazai looked exhausted. “You know, your jokes are awful. Every single time,
you say them with a straight face so they don’t sound like jokes.”

I tilted my head to the side. “I wasn’t trying to make a joke.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dazai turned to the side, his face sulking. “Ugh, what a pain. Mori-san is
definitely gonna scold me later for leaking so many of the organization’s secrets…”

I sat in thought for a moment before asking, “Mori-san? Who’s that?”

Dazai looked at me in surprise. “You’ve…really forgotten?”

⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪⧪