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Rain is loud.
It hits the shipping container like thrown gravel. Not loud the way explosions are loud. It’s worse than that—constant, arrhythmic, coming from everywhere at once. The metal walls ring with it, amplify it, turn every drop into a sharp little impact that vibrates through the air and straight into Dazai’s skull.
He’s curled on his side on the shitty, narrow mattress, knees pulled up too tight, one hand braced uselessly against the side of his head. The other is clenched in the measly blanket, fingers twitching, knuckles white. The bandages over his eye feel too tight today. Or maybe too loose. He can’t tell. The sensation under them is wrong either way—an awful, crawling pressure that pulses in time with his heartbeat.
Behind the empty socket, something stabs. It’s deep and hot and wrong, like a spike being driven inward from the inside of his skull. Every pulse sends it flaring, bright and nauseating. Dazai bites down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood, but it doesn’t help. Nothing helps. It never does on days like this.
The world through his remaining eye is mostly gone. Static crawls across his vision in uneven bands—white noise made visible. Shapes blur and fragment at the edges. When he tries to focus, the static intensifies, fizzing until it washes everything out completely. Dazai squeezes his eye shut, breath hitching, and immediately regrets it. The darkness doesn’t make it better; it just gives the pain more room to echo.
There’s a high-pitched ringing in his ears, layered under the rain. It swells and recedes unpredictably, like feedback. Every sound feels too close, too sharp. Even his own breathing grates against his nerves.
He swallows, throat working as nausea rolls through him in a thick, heavy wave. Thinking in words hurts. All Dazai can manage are small, involuntary sounds when the pain spikes: a sharp inhale, a thin whine he can’t quite smother, a noise like he’s choking back something animal.
He hates those sounds. He can’t stop them.
The container smells like rust and damp fabric. Rainwater has found a seam in the roof again; he can hear it dripping somewhere behind him, a slow, irregular plink that lands directly on his last nerve. The pressure in his head swells with every change in the weather, every shift in the air. Storms always do this. He figured that out years ago, even if no one ever bothered to explain why.
Dazai hasn’t left the container all day. He hasn’t even tried.
Standing would be a disaster. Walking is worse. His depth perception is shot—on good days it’s shaky, on days like this it’s nonexistent. The floor might as well be tilting. If he missteps, if he clips his shoulder on the doorframe or trips on the uneven metal lip at the entrance, the jolt would send the pain straight through the roof. And that’s assuming he doesn’t vomit on himself first.
Another wave of nausea hits, stronger this time. Dazai barely manages to twist onto his side before his stomach heaves. There’s nothing much to bring up—just bitter acid and water—but it burns anyway. He retches again, body shaking, a small, humiliating sound slipping out of his throat before he can stop it.
When it passes, he’s left gasping, forehead pressed to the thin mattress, eyes watering uncontrollably.
He stays like that for a while. Time stretches. The rain doesn’t let up.
Somewhere outside, footsteps crunch through the gravel. Dazai registers it distantly at first, through the ringing. His body tenses on instinct, a sharp spike of anxiety cutting through the haze, and he tries to tell himself it’s nothing—but the footsteps are too familiar. Too confident.
The door slams open.
Light floods in, harsh and white, slicing straight through Dazai’s skull.
“What the hell is your problem, you useless goddamn—”
The voice hits him like a physical blow. Dazai jerks, a sharp cry tearing out of him before he can stop it. His hands fly up, one clamping over his bandaged eye, the other scrabbling blindly for something solid to anchor himself. The sudden noise sends the pain behind his socket flaring so hard he sees stars—real ones this time, bursting violently across the static.
“—piece of—” The voice cuts off abruptly.
Chuuya stands in the doorway, framed by rain and gray sky, mid-rant with his mouth still open. His eyes flick down, taking in the scene in a fraction of a second: Dazai curled in on himself, shaking; the way his shoulders are hunched defensively; the hand pressed too hard against his eye; the small, uncontrolled sound he’s making as he tries and fails to steady his breathing.
“What the hell,” Chuuya says, quieter this time.
Dazai can’t look at him. He can’t make his eye focus even if he wanted to. The light is unbearable. He turns his face into the mattress, teeth clenched, another whimper slipping out as the movement sends a fresh lance of pain through his head.
“Oi,” Chuuya says sharply. “Don’t ignore me, shitty bastard.”
Dazai tries to respond. He really does. He opens his mouth, meaning to throw out something flippant, something sharp—sorry, Chuuya, didn’t realize my loyal dog missed me so much—but all that comes out is a broken sound, half breath, half choke.
“…You sick or something?” Chuuya asks, and there’s irritation there, but it’s fraying at the edges now. Uncertain.
Dazai swallows hard. Talking is impossible. The words won’t line up in his head; they slide away before he can grab them. He shakes his head once, then immediately regrets that too. The movement sends the static surging, vision washing out completely for a terrifying second. He makes another sound, sharper this time, and curls tighter.
“Shit,” Chuuya mutters. Rain patters behind him. He doesn’t come any closer yet. “You skipped the whole damn mission,” Chuuya says, more cautiously now. “I had to handle it myself.”
Dazai almost laughs. The thought skids sideways into something hysterical and then dissolves under another wave of nausea. He presses his face harder into the mattress, like that could ease the pressure, breathing shallowly and trying not to throw up again.
“I thought you were just being a prissy brat,” Chuuya continues, and there’s a note of defensiveness in it now, like he’s justifying himself. “You always pull this shit on rainy days. I figured—”
He stops.
Dazai hears the shift in his breathing. Hears him move closer, boots scraping softly on the metal floor.
“Hey,” Chuuya says, and this time he doesn’t shout. “What’s wrong with you?”
The question hangs there, raw and awkward.
Dazai squeezes his eyes shut. The phantom sensation flares—an awful, crawling itch deep behind the bandages, like something is trying to claw its way out from inside his skull. His fingers dig into the fabric reflexively, pressing too hard.
It isn’t the first time the pain has dragged him backward like this. Dazai remembers the room it happened in—not in images, but in textures and pressure: the grit under his fingernails, the way the air felt too close, the sound he made when he realized he could still feel everything even after. People later would call it impulsive and disturbing, would say a child doesn’t understand consequences, but Dazai had understood perfectly in that moment.
He had wanted the sensation to stop belonging to anyone else. He had wanted something that was his, even if it ruined him. The worst part isn’t the memory itself—it’s that the pain now feels like proof it worked, like the body never forgot the bargain he made.
“Don’t—” Dazai manages, pressing harder against the empty socket, the word barely audible. It hurts to say even that much.
Chuuya freezes again. “…Your eye,” he says slowly. “Is that—”
Dazai exhales shakily. The breath comes out as something that might have been a laugh once, stripped of humor. He nods, just barely.“Storms,” he mutters, forcing the word out one syllable at a time. “Pressure’s… bad.”
The admission feels like a crack in his armor. He hates it immediately.
For a long moment, Chuuya doesn’t speak. Then, more quietly than Dazai has ever heard him: “You mean… it still hurts?”
Dazai’s mouth twists. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t need to.
The rain keeps falling. The container creaks softly around them, metal expanding and contracting with the cold.
Chuuya swallows. When he speaks again, his voice is rough, uncertain, stripped of its usual bite.
“…You should’ve said something, idiot.”
Dazai almost snaps back that it’s none of rhe stupid slug’s business. Almost throws out something cruel and bright to slam the door shut again. But the pain spikes hard enough to steal the words from him, leaving him curled and shaking instead, a soft, broken sound escaping his throat that he can’t stop.
Chuuya stiffens. “…Okay,” he says finally, like he’s talking to a bomb he’s not sure how to defuse. “Okay. Just—don’t move. I’m not gonna— I’ll keep my voice down.”
He does.
And for the first time since the rain started, the noise in Dazai’s head eases just a fraction—not because the pain is gone, but because someone finally noticed it was there.
Chuuya actually keeps his word. The silence that follows is strange—too big, too deliberate. Dazai can hear him moving anyway, soft steps this time, the scrape of a boot being nudged back against the wall. The rain is still loud, still everywhere, but Chuuya doesn’t add to it. He doesn’t say Dazai’s name again. That alone feels wrong.
Something blocks the light then, enough that the edge of it dulls, no longer a blade cutting straight through Dazai’s skull. Dazai exhales shakily without meaning to, a thin sound that gives him away. He hates that, too. But he has no time to dwell on it before Chuuya sets something down near the mattress. There’s a faint plastic click.
“Water,” he says, low. “I’m not—I’m just gonna leave it here.”
Dazai doesn’t move. Every movement he does make only turns into a flinch halfway through, pain flaring sharp and sudden. So he stays still, fingers twitching against the blanket. The phantom sensation crawls again, deep in the hollow socket behind the bandages, like something restless and alive.
Chuuya makes a small sound in his throat. And for a while, they just sit there like that. Dazai doesn’t know how long. Time slips sideways when the migraines get this bad; everything stretches and compresses unpredictably. The ringing in his ears swells, then ebbs. The static in his vision shifts patterns, white fizz breaking into jagged bands and then dissolving again.
He focuses on sound instead. The rain. Chuuya’s breathing. The faint creak of the container settling. Even if it hurts in its own way.
“You… always get it this bad?” Chuuya asks eventually, like he’s not sure whether it’s a good idea to continue talking about it.
Dazai considers lying. The instinct flares automatically—sharp, practiced—but it costs too much effort to shape the words. He settles for a small shrug instead, which is answer enough.
“Storms,” Chuuya mutters again, like he’s testing the word. “So that’s why.”
Dazai hums weakly, the sound vibrating unpleasantly in his chest. He swallows, throat tight, and forces out, “Don’t… tell anyone.”
The request comes out flatter than he intends. Too bare.
“…Wasn’t planning to,” Chuuya says. There’s a pause. “Didn’t even know.”
That’s the problem, Dazai thinks distantly. Nobody does. Nobody but—
The silence stretches again, heavier this time. Dazai can feel Chuuya thinking, the weight of it pressing in from the other side of the room. It makes his skin itch.
When he thinks back on it now, what Dazai remembers the most is how listless he was. He hadn’t cried. He hadn’t felt anything. It had felt more like following a line of thought to its natural conclusion—what happens if I do this?
He remembers the sensation registering dimly, more pressure than pain at first, and the strange disappointment when it didn’t immediately turn into something bigger, something clarifying. He remembers the blood, too, sticky and warm and everywhere.
The adults around him had panicked in a way that made no sense to him, voices rising, hands shaking, someone yelling his name like it mattered. He had watched it all from a careful distance, mildly confused by the urgency, wondering why this was what finally made them react.
“Those bandages,” Chuuya says slowly. “They’re not just—”
Dazai’s fingers tighten. The pressure behind his socket spikes, hot and vicious.
“Stop,” he mutters.
Chuuya cuts himself off, sharp enough that Dazai almost flinches again.
Another point in his favor. He learns fast, when he wants to.
But the realization is already there. Dazai can hear it settle into place, can hear the moment Chuuya’s understanding clicks from injured to done to himself. The air shifts with it, thickening.
“…You were a kid,” Chuuya says quietly.
“Don’t,” he snaps, sharper now, a sudden edge slicing through the haze. His good eye opens, unfocused but burning, fixing on Chuuya’s vague outline. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Chuuya asks, reflexively defensive.
“That voice,” Dazai bites out. “Like Chuuya has figured something out. Like it changes anything.”
Chuuya bristles. “I was just—”
“Shut up,” Dazai cuts in, breath hitching as another wave of pain rolls through him. He forces himself to keep going anyway, words tumbling out raw and ugly. “Chuuya doesn’t get to look at me like that. Not you. Not anyone.”
His hands shake. He hates that most of all.
Chuuya’s jaw tightens. “You think I’m pitying you?”
“I know it,” Dazai snaps, then winces as the sound echoes too loud in his own head. He curls in on himself again, teeth clenched. “And I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I didn’t then, either.”
The last part slips out before he can stop it.
Chuuya goes very still. “…That’s not what I was gonna say,” he says finally with a sigh.
Dazai laughs weakly, humorless. “Sure.”
Another long pause. The rain doesn’t let up.
Slowly, Chuuya exhales. “I was gonna say you’re an idiot,” he admits. “And that you’re a bigger pain in my ass than I thought.”
That… isn’t what Dazai expects.
“And,” Chuuya adds, quieter, “that I won’t yell at you for skipping rainy days anymore.”
Dazai blinks. The static in his vision surges, then settles. He stares at the dim shape of Chuuya through the haze, trying to parse that.
“That’s it?” he mutters.
Chuuya shrugs. “That’s it.”
Dazai lets his eye fall shut again, exhaustion creeping in around the edges of the pain. The migraine is still there—still brutal, still relentless—but the container feels less like it’s closing in on him now.
“…The slug is still loud,” he murmurs.
Chuuya snorts quietly. “Yeah. I know. And you’re still pathetic.”
They lapse back into silence after that. Not a comfortable one. Not a kind one. But something like a ceasefire.
Outside, the rain keeps falling. Inside, nothing is healed.
But Chuuya doesn’t leave.
And Dazai doesn’t tell him to.