Alternate Ending + scenario = drabble.
What does Dazai-san want with it?
It, currently, was curled on his bed - his bed. A child not much younger than himself, but still young. Tiny. Poorly nourished. Badly clothed.
Dazai had gone on an assignment with Chuuya that morning, to obtain something valuable. Something integral to the future of the Port Mafia. He had been ordered to stay behind, and naturally had not followed that order. Dazai had clearly decided he wasn’t ready for the mission he and Chuuya had embarked on, he’d seen it in the glint of Dazai’s visible eye.
No, we don’t need you on this one, Ryuu-kun. Why don’t you stay behind.
Curiosity and need had burned through him. Them not needing him meant that he was more a liability than an asset, and he couldn’t have that. He needed to prove they were wrong. A need that, at the end of the day, had landed him nose to nose with a white tiger almost as bestial as his own Rashomon, all teeth and claw and no restraint. And yet… somehow that creature - that rampaging monster even Rashomon could not devour whole - was this boy laying on his bed; his punishment from Dazai, for disobeying orders and making him save his neck.
Dazai was long gone now though, up high in Mori’s tower, sweet talking this thing in his bed a place in the Mafia. Reflexively, naturally, the hem of his coat rippled, and the head of a real beast curved around, static crackling around it. It wanted to eat, wanted to consumed. Akutagawa could relate to the sentiment as it echoed through his head. What would Dazai think of it once he devoured it?
The boy on his bed rolled over, stretching and arching his back like some scrawny slum-stray. Though, perhaps the slum-stray would have had the sense for danger, with a rabid dog nearby and hungry. Instead the boy rolled again, curled in on his stomach, and stilled in his sleep once more.
Pathetic. Not even worth the time.
And yet he still couldn’t help but think - what did Dazai want with it?