send “you’re making a huge mistake” for my muse’s reaction.

       ` You don’t have to go. Dazai already explained the circumstances of you refusing. `

It lingers and simmers annoyingly close to the surface, too obtrusive to be effectively smothered, yet simultaneously too faint for another to sense it. Not that he necessarily wanted someone else to -- right? He didn’t know, but that was neither here nor there.

Insomnia is both the harbinger and source of heavy eyelids and well-intended, but ultimately shallow, inquiries of one’s wellbeing ( although they are likely made shallow by his own objections to speaking the truth ) -- he’s dealt with all of them in the minutes? hours? prior ( the directness of the sun betrayed that he must’ve slipped out of consciousness for a brief? moment, although a revered feeling of being rested was expectedly absent ), and most of all, they brought nightmares. Nightmares he’d figured were effectively vanquished some time ago, and then roused to periodic appearances come the death of a ... headmaster, and back for a further nightly encore at the announcement of an assignment in that place.

It was vacated. Not necessarily of its tenants, as Atsushi could neither confirm nor deny to his relative dismay, but of the dense shadow that hung over its architecture : histories, memories. Or at least, it should have been, for he’d always reasoned their lifeline to have been that man.

... Atsushi supposed he wasn’t a great detective yet.

The pads of his fingertips were faintly soiled in rubbed residuum of the pencil tossed mindlessly to the side, the other hand propping up a chin as he gazed out an adjacent window out to a city that had become familiar. Was this home? He would’ve thought so earlier; but Dazai, in pointing to that man as not only a teacher, but a father, had effectively called that into question.

That’s where thoughts always looped back to: Osamu Dazai.

Wait.

Where was he? Shooting upwards, causing half a jolt of surprise to no one else but himself, optics darted about the room: his ment -- superior was no where to be found. ... Weren’t they supposed to have left by now? He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember -- How easily small thoughts such as that disappear! -- but regardless, he was swift in taking his leave from the office, and finding himself on the street, where he stood, dumbfounded, helplessly scanning passersby’s faces, for the one person of interest.    // @ncropolis.

                      ❛    sure.    ❜

   WITH EASE, COMPLIANCE CALLS FORTH FROM HIS LIPS ; time had afforded the youth opportunity  ( or, perhaps more accurately, forced him )  to grow accustomed to such idiosyncrasies, much like anything else that happened around the ever-vagrant office  ( although the former, admittedly, took considerably more time )  . like and unlike the other, atsushi doesn’t mind doing his job ; a superior and subordinate are alike in this in the most basic way  ( and perhaps in this way only )  .

     wordlessly, the youth finds his way towards the kitchen to prepare the coffee. thankfully, it seemed that someone had already prepared a pot. kunikida, he’d resolve, unceremoniously preparing the drink, he’d’ve surely been here by now.

     slipping back into the main room of the office, atsushi set the cup before ranpo on a scarce spare space on the desk, quickly deemed safe.

                     ❛    . . . which cases are these , ranpo - san ?    ❜

     inexorable is the wandering of eyes to the papers splayed about the work area -- particularly to the pictorial evidence that supplemented text. an offhand question, atsushi hadn’t meant much by it.  . . . at first. then he began to realize that these images were foreign, unrecognized ; neither from a public access source nor the more private evidence that comes to eventually make a few laps around the ageny, they were a glossy print in a high resolution that atsushi hadn’t even known they held the capacity for. 

POPOKKI.

    PRIMAL IS THE NOCTURNAL BEAST, for it pays no heed to the paradigms and institutions of a time where it is unfamiliar, simply discarding it for unrefined, necessary wants. the epoch wherein the tiger would find itself comfortable seldom existed ; perhaps magical in essence, one could suppose, it’s existence affirmed solely within the ordinance of ABILITY. headlines plastered to sea-breeze weathered concrete in a brazen, bolded font proclaiming `MURDER ! ` are not of the animal’s realm of concern, an unrecognized inscription shrouded easily in stark shadows. rather, it’s forced proponent becomes the human which takes it’s place come inevitable daylight, roaming the streets just as another had, carried forth by many of the same desires. but in the government of the waking population, meekness would swiftly overcome one inexperienced and overwrought.

     quick to accredit faint shifts in surrounding sounds to smaller fauna or even more simply to something so mundane as a breeze, golden optics never find need to shift its intent from a metropolis. and yet, a sound, yet still small in magnitude, is somehow different, and is the first thing that so inclines the beast to halt in its stride, maw leading the rest of a countenance to face the other. it’s not unfamiliar with it’s kind, but kinship is not something to be assumed; for it had seen various examples of a similar physique wandering about the city’s concrete veins, lurking in shadows, traces of soot caked naturally to their fur.

     unbeknownst to the tiger itself, itself and the embodiment before him shared similarity in anatomy  ( for it, seemingly the sole exemplar of it’s kind, walked alone, never even differentiating it’s own reflection from surroundings )  , and this only. It observes silently as the other opens it’s mouth slowly, eliciting a sound unfamiliar even to one well-versed in the soundscape of the diverse nocturne city. this bafflement  ( or perhaps more accurately, the tiger’s allotted time for it )  fades quickly. and similarly the feline would deftly continue in it’s stride, paying no heed to the smaller once a breath has passed.