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It was a rare peaceful afternoon at the Armed Detective Agency. There were no high profile cases to be done, no looming threats, and they were still in a ceasefire with the Port Mafia. Kenji and Tanizaki were both out on casual, more routine jobs, and everyone else had only administrative work to do, a relief after the horrible days that they had endured during the Cannibalism ability crisis. The office was full of the calm rustle of paperwork. The only other sounds intruding on the companionable silence were the faint crunching coming from Ranpo’s desk as he worked his way through his stash of snacks, some of which he was sharing with Yosano—and the occasional grinding of teeth from Kunikida as he eyed Dazai’s empty seat. But even though Atsushi could see the incoming scolding gathering over Kunikida’s head like a dark cloud, ready to be released in a thunderbolt when Dazai eventually showed his face at the office, for now they all simply bent their heads over their desks, revelling in the quiet atmosphere.
That atmosphere was thoroughly shattered soon after lunchtime, when the door to the Agency burst open and Dazai ran in as though a horde of demons were on his tail.
Atsushi jumped to his feet, instantly on high alert, scanning the doorway for whatever was in pursuit. Anything that could make Dazai run like that had to be truly terrifying. Beside him, Kyouka got up as well, subtly sliding her ever-present knife out of its sheath.
Dazai, meanwhile, threw himself up onto Kunikida’s desk, scrabbling the perfectly ordered paperwork into disarray as he pulled his knees up to his chest in a chaotic flailing of limbs. Kunikida hissed, and only Dazai’s air of genuine panic kept him from chewing the man out immediately.
“Atsushi-kun!” Dazai yelled across the office. “Get this thing away from me, it’s trying to kill me!”
“I would have thought you’d be happy about that,” Kunikida muttered, looking in despair at the scuff marks on his papers.
“Not like this, I'm not!” Dazai said emphatically, pointing at something on the floor. “It wants to claw my eyes out, slowly and painfully, just look at the thing!”
Approaching, Atsushi peered down where Dazai was pointing, and saw a very small, very fluffy ginger cat. It was almost ludicrously nonthreatening, though he had to admit that it was giving Dazai an impressive stink eye. As Atsushi watched, the cat lunged at the desk and raked its claws down the side, stretching up in an attempt to get at the detective. Dazai shrieked and pulled his limbs farther from the edge.
“You see?” Dazai said, glaring back down at it. “It’s a demon!”
“It’s a cat,” Kyouka said softly, eyes wide.
“Careful, Kyouka-chan, don’t pet it,” Atsushi cautioned. “It seems feral, it might bite you.”
At that, the cat turned toward Atsushi and glared at him too. Now, that was odd.
“How did you anger a cat this badly?” Kunikida asked with a sigh, standing and walking around the desk to get a better look at the animal.
“I did nothing,” Dazai hissed, bristling like a cat himself. “I was just walking here, and the next thing I knew this menace was running straight at me!”
The cat discovered a route up onto the desk via a potted plant, and went for Dazai in a series of graceful leaps which had Dazai screeching and scrambling off the desk.
“It—won’t—stop—chasing—me—!” Dazai wheezed as he pelted around the room, the cat in grim pursuit.
“Very odd, for an animal to have such a vendetta against one person,” Yosano observed, as the odd chase ran past her and Ranpo. “Maybe it’s someone’s ability. What do you think, Ranpo-san?”
Ranpo put on his glasses and squinted at the cat, still chewing. A few seconds later, he choked on his snack and burst into laughter so uproarious that he doubled over in his office chair.
“Don’t worry,” he said, looking up at Yosano with gleeful eyes. “Dazai will understand in a minute.”
Atsushi watched and waited patiently, and the next time the cat ran past him he reached down, snagged it under the armpits, and hoisted it carefully into the air where its claws and teeth couldn’t twist around and reach him. It writhed and hissed under his grip, but it couldn’t escape.
“Why do you think it’s after you in particular, Dazai-san?” Atsushi asked curiously, adjusting his hold a little. Its fur was very soft.
Dazai stumbled to a halt against a desk, breathing heavily and looking thoroughly harassed. “I am afraid I couldn’t say, Atsushi-kun. I’ve never been popular with animals, per say, but it’s never been like this.”
“Well, we’d better keep it somewhere away from you, just in case,” Atsushi said, looking around. “Do we have a spare room we could put it in? Maybe we can call a vet to come look at it—”
At this, the cat let out a veritable scream of frustration, and Atsushi and Kyouka both flinched at the sheer magnitude of the sound. The cat had lungs.
Dazai, meanwhile, had frozen in place, staring at the cat.
Then, he pushed himself up from the desk and took a few faltering steps towards Atsushi, peering closely into the cat’s blue eyes.
“...Chuuya?” he ventured.
The cat growled pointedly and pawed at the air in Dazai’s direction, toes flexing as it reached for him.
“Oh,” Dazai breathed.
With that, he ran forward and scooped the cat out of Atsushi’s arms, before Atsushi could get out a single word of warning.
There was a puff of smoke, several confused shouts, and a loud “About fucking time—”
And then the smoke cleared, and a very red-faced, rumpled Port Mafia executive was standing pressed up against Dazai's front, hat half-squished against the detective’s chest and his black overcoat coat bunched up over their entangled arms. Atsushi yelped in surprise, and Kyouka darted in front of him, knife raised protectively. However, the two of them, along with the rest of the baffled Agency members—plus Ranpo, who was still laughing—were summarily ignored by both Dazai and Chuuya, who were seemingly off in their own world.
“Why the fuck did you keep running, asshole!” Chuuya hissed into the stunned silence, pulling back to glare up at Dazai. “I needed you to cancel the damn ability!”
“It was difficult to recognize you when I thought I was about to be mauled by a savage beast, hatrack,” Dazai drawled, already recovering his composure. “If you had simply walked up to me like a normal kitten, instead of charging at me like a bull, I wouldn’t have run away in the first place.”
“I was sick and tired of being a cat, can you blame me?” Chuuya grumbled, pushing at Dazai’s chest irritably. “You know how annoying it is to be that small in a city like this? There are cars everywhere, not to mention dumbass pedestrians that don’t look where their feet are going, and I couldn’t even use my ability to avoid them all.”
“Ah, but you should be used to it! Chuuya is always that small, isn’t he?” Dazai said with a shit-eating grin. “I don’t see much of a height difference, myself.”
“Shut the fuck up. The only reason I’m not killing you for that is because you canceled the ability,” Chuuya said with a dangerous glower. “Now let go, I need to get back to headquarters before they think I’ve died or some shit.”
“How did an ability user get to you, anyway?” Dazai asked, stepping back.
“Ugh, I don’t want to talk about—” Chuuya was cut off as Dazai’s hands left his skin. Because in another puff of smoke, Chuuya shrunk back into the fluffy ginger cat, dropping through the air with a yowl.
Dazai swore, and dove forward to catch him, but he overbalanced and the pair landed on the floor in a painful mess of limbs.
“—FUCK’S SAKE,” Chuuya’s feline screech resolved back into words as soon as Dazai touched him again. “What the shit—”
“Language, Chuuya,” Dazai groaned, trying to extract himself from the tangle without letting go of Chuuya. “There are children present. God, you’re heavy—how can a chibi weigh this much?”
“It’s muscle, dumbass,” Chuuya growled, punching Dazai in the shoulder demonstratively. “Get off, you’re not exactly light either.”
The revelation that the executive would transform back the instant Dazai wasn’t touching him allowed the other Agency members to relax somewhat. The man couldn’t exactly wreak havoc in the agency office as a tiny cat. Kyouka sheathed her knife, and stepped back to Atsushi’s side.
“It’s a weird ability,” Ranpo remarked, strolling over with his laughter finally under control. “Think you have to touch the ability user themself to cancel it out for good, Dazai?”
Dazai sat up, tugging Chuuya along with him with a hand on Chuuya’s bare forearm. The movement landed Chuuya half in Dazai’s lap, which appeared to enrage him, as he steadily went redder in the face the longer he sat there. However, he didn’t pull away either.
“Maybe,” Dazai said thoughtfully. “I think we need to know more about the ability that caused this, Chuuya.”
Chuuya groaned, hiding his face in one gloved palm. “Fine. It was triggered by a book, if you must know. I don’t think the ability user themself was there, I didn’t see anyone.”
Kunikida approached slowly, eyeing Chuuya cautiously. “So it’s a book that’s some sort of an extension of a gifted’s ability? Perhaps like my notebooks. Where did you find such a book?”
Chuuya’s ears were even going red, now. “It was a book of poetry in a bookshop. I read a poem from it, and once I finished it, the next thing I knew I was turning into a damn cat!”
Dazai burst out with a cackle of laughter. “Ah yes, your one weakness— poetry. Now it makes sense.”
“Shut up!”
“Well, Chuuya-san, we can go and retrieve the book for Dazai-san to nullify,” Atsushi said, exchanging a glance with Kyouka. She was still watching Chuuya closely, distrustfully. Well, he was an old superior of hers—at least she didn’t look as petrified of him as she had been of Mori. Actually, maybe she was just feeling betrayed that Chuuya hadn't been a real cat. “What was the title?”
For some reason, this made Chuuya more flustered yet, and he scrambled up off of Dazai, yanking the detective up as well. “No need for that! I’ll just take Dazai to the book myself, it’ll be faster that way,” he said, hurriedly tugging one of his gloves off with his teeth so he could grab Dazai’s hand without fabric impeding Dazai's ability. “My apologies for the disruption!”
And with that, he dragged Dazai inexorably out of the room by the hand, slamming the door shut in their wake.
Silence fell for a moment, then—
“Why do you think he was so reluctant to say the name of the book?” Atsushi wondered aloud.
Yosano stared after them, amused. “It must be quite an embarrassing book. I fear Dazai is going to have a good time, I could almost pity that redhead.”
“Chuuya, slow down—”
“The faster we get there, the sooner we can stop touching each other,” Chuuya spat over his shoulder, power walking over the pavement so quickly that even Dazai’s longer legs were struggling to keep up with him. “What, don’t tell me you’re enjoying this.”
“Of course I’m not enjoying this, you’re pulling my arm out of its socket. Do you want people to stare at us?” Dazai said breathlessly. He did not have the stamina for this much rushing about. “Because people are staring at us.”
Chuuya glanced around, glowering at people on the sidewalk around them who were, indeed, staring. “Who cares, they’ll forget about it as soon as we’re out of sight!”
“Alright, better question, do you want to create such a fuss that you attract the attention of someone you know? Your subordinates, perhaps?” Dazai said, exasperated. “It looks like you’re abducting me, you realize. It would slow us down more if the police got called, or if we caused an incident with other mafia members.”
With a deep sigh, Chuuya slowed. He turned back to Dazai, eyebrows raised challengingly. “Fine, almighty strategist. You want to lead the way? Because I doubt you know where the bookshop is.”
“All I’m saying,” Dazai said smoothly, closing the distance between them and threading their fingers together more comfortably, “is that if I walk next to you, it will look more natural, and no one will look at us twice. Is that too much for you to handle, mister tiny terrifying mafia man?”
Chuuya’s eyes went wide, and he looked down quickly, hiding under the brim of his hat. “Whatever,” he muttered. “...The bookshop is just a little ways ahead. Get a move on, shithead.”
It was a hole in the wall bookshop, tucked away from the main streets next to an alley. The front windows were a little dusty, and the books that could be seen through the haze looked old and shabby.
“...All that mafia money, and you come to a place like this to find poetry?” Dazai said dubiously as Chuuya tugged him inside, past the bleary-eyed, bespectacled shop owner and between the tall shelves of books.
“They have stuff that’s out of print,” Chuuya said testily. “Not that you can talk anyway, you’re shabbier than anything in here.”
“Hey, this shabby man is the only thing keeping you from transforming back into a tiny little kitten,” Dazai said, flexing his fingers slightly between Chuuya's. “And one of the books in here is the reason you’re in this predicament, so which of us is better, really?”
“Jealous of a bookshop, are you?” Chuuya snorted. “Weirdo. Come on, it’s back here.”
The book was in the very back of the shop, through a labyrinth of shelves, still lying on the ground where Chuuya must have dropped it when he transformed. Dazai scooped it up and looked at the cover, keeping a thumb between the pages that it had been open on. It was a thin little book, with illustrations of cats on the front—cats which were lounging about atop the typeface, dressed up with fancy hats and fans? Oh, it looked like it was for meant children, this was going to be good.
“‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’,” Dazai read out. “T.S. Eliot, hmm?”
“Yes, he’s a poet,” Chuuya said, looking flustered again. “With a very annoying ability, apparently. Now put it down. You’ve touched it, it should be nullified now.”
Dazai grinned down at him deviously. “Not yet,” he said. “I’m very curious about the poem that drew you to this book, Chuuya~”
Chuuya cursed and swiped at the book with his free hand. “There’s no need for this!”
“Of course there is,” Dazai said, holding the book out of reach. “Consider this my payment for helping you. Now, let’s see…”
He read the poem aloud with malicious intent.
“Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!” Dazai finished dramatically, ignoring Chuuya’s spluttered protests. “My, no wonder you liked this one. Oh, look, it even says he’s a ginger cat, very tall and thin—a match on two out of three counts, at least. Wishful thinking on your part, perhaps? Poor Chuu-nyaa.”
“...”
“...You know, like nyaa~? Oh god not the face, not the face, Chuuya I’m sorry—”
“I don’t need to give you the sweet release of death to make you regret your goddamn PUNS, you fucking—”
“Is everything alright, sirs?” a quavering, thin voice asked. It was the store owner, peering around the corner at them through his round spectacles.
Dazai and Chuuya both froze, Chuuya with his arm in a headlock around Dazai’s neck, Dazai in the midst of scrabbling at Chuuya’s arms.
“Um. Yes, we’re fine,” Dazai managed, coughing a bit at the pressure on his windpipe. “Though, while you’re here, were you aware that you had a somewhat cursed book in your stock?”
The man looked convincingly bewildered. “I do?” he said.
“Yes, this one,” Chuuya said gruffly, releasing Dazai and gesturing at the book in Dazai’s hand. “It can turn people into cats if they read it.”
“Oh! I didn’t read it,” the shop owner said, brow furrowing. “Oh, dear. Perhaps that was why it came so cheap. Am I in trouble, sirs? Did someone get hurt?”
“No, everything is fine,” Chuuya said with a sigh. “How much is it?”
“I was pricing it at 500 yen, but—”
“I’ll buy it, and we’ll dispose of it safely,” said Chuuya, pulling out his wallet. “Really. It’s not your fault it was dangerous.”
Dazai stared at Chuuya meaningly as they exited the shop, the thin volume tucked safely under his arm.
“What?” Chuuya said. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“That was awfully kindhearted of you, Chuuya,” Dazai teased. “What would your subordinates say if they saw the tiny terrifying mafia man now, hmm?”
“Oh, shut up,” Chuuya groused. “I might go back to this bookshop at some point, it only makes sense not to scare off the owner.”
Then, Chuuya paused on the sidewalk outside the shop windows, and hunched his shoulders up around his ears, face hidden under the brim of his hat. “…Thanks, by the way,” he said quietly, so quiet that Dazai almost didn’t hear him.
Dazai blinked down at him, astonished. “What for?”
Chuuya glanced up at him a long moment before responding, an odd look in his eyes. “There was a time you would have left me transformed, just to mess with me,” he said, shrugging. “But today, as soon as you knew it was me, you tried to nullify it. I rarely see you move that fast, actually, lazy as you are. It was…surprising.”
Dazai looked away, feeling suddenly uncomfortable in his skin, too exposed. “You’re one of the most powerful gifted in Yokohama. It would be a nuisance if you were taken out by an ability like that,” he said coolly.
Well. Although he said that, the truth was that once he had recognized Chuuya, he had moved to touch him without thinking about it at all. Quite unusually for him. But he wasn’t about to admit that, especially not to Chuuya.
Chuuya grumbled something that sounded vaguely like “Having emotionally genuine conversations with you is like pulling teeth.” He continued, in a louder tone: “All I’m saying is that, for once, you didn’t do the absolute shittiest thing possible, so—“
And then a hand was around the back of Dazai’s neck, tugging him down. Ginger hair filled his vision, and something warm and soft pressed briefly against his cheek. Dazai’s racing thoughts skid to a skittering halt.
Chuuya pulled back and released him, cheeks a burning cherry red. “—So thank you!” he yelled, far too loud and aggressive for how close he was standing to Dazai. Then he whirled around and stalked off down the street, too fast for a walk but not quite fast enough to be categorized as a run. A hasty retreat, perhaps. Dazai stared after him until he was out of sight.
Left alone, Dazai slowly raised a hand to the burning spot on his cheek where Chuuya had kissed him. “…What,” he asked of the world at large.
He looked around, wishing vaguely for some sort of witness who could assure him that he hadn’t just hallucinated that entire conversation, but the few people within eyesight were busy civilians going about their lives, and he could already infer that no one had paid Chuuya’s incomprehensible actions any attention.
After standing like a rigid statue for several moments, blocking the sidewalk and forcing passing pedestrians to part around him like a boulder in a river, Dazai mechanically turned and began the trek back to the agency, book almost forgotten under his arm.
Well. The next time he ran into Chuuya was certainly going to be interesting.
He glanced down at the slim book, a plan forming in his mind. In the meantime, however…
“Ah, president! Yes, I’m sorry you had to miss the cat excitement earlier, though between you and me, I doubt the little spitfire would have let you pet him—but I have a surprise I think you’ll be happy with!”
The next day, Kunikida returned from his lunch break to find the agency filled with very familiar looking cats, with Dazai sitting amongst it all with an evil grin. There was a white one with uneven fur, a yellowish one with big wide eyes, a spiky black one with apparently permanently shut eyes, an embarrassed orange one, a black one with blue eyes and a calm disposition, and an older grey one that looked over the moon with happiness—
“DAZAI!”
“It’s for the president’s sake, Kunikida-kun~ Imagine if he never got the opportunity to be a cat before the book was discarded! Why, it would be a catastrophe—oh shit, wait, no, Kunikida—you need me to reverse the effects, you need me to reverse the effects—“