[Comprehensive] How to kill a rabid dog gently

"Do you really think so, Dazai-san?"

The corners of Bai Lan's lips curled into a slight arc first, and he looked at Osamu Dazai with a malicious smile expanding on his face, but there was almost a hint of pity in his eyes.

"You don't even know what you're seeing, exactly..."

"Bai Lan." Cheng had regained his composure, and she interrupted him calmly, "Sorry, but this is between me and Dazai."

"……yes?"

Bai Lan asked with a sigh.

"Have you made up your mind, Cheng?"

Cheng gently pushed Bai Lan away and looked back at him.

Although what happened at this time was not what Cheng had expected, and it was hard to say that she understood the other party's intentions, but she had already discovered that Bai Lan knew a lot more about her than she imagined...even including the things she had never met with. the ones mentioned.

Therefore, to clarify the true meaning of the other party's question at this moment, this is exactly the question she has been asking herself constantly.

You have come from such a far away place, maybe you will still go to more distant places that you can't predict in the future.

Even after the body here is annihilated, these memories of giving and being given will continue to travel with the soul. At that time, can you still go to the next destination calmly?

Can you bear it to fade over time?Or on the contrary, it becomes more and more heavy, and finally becomes a curse that cannot be shaken off - can you not hate your fate?

Cheng didn't know.

But she said.

"Yes."

This is her decision.

"..."

Cheng, I...

Bai Lan's voice was unusually soft, and even Cheng could only vaguely catch a breath.

She couldn't and didn't have time to find out what Bai Lan said.

In a world where only three people are still awake, Cheng's figure is gradually thinning out. The first moment she found out about this, she stretched out her hand to Osamu Dazai in a panic, and Dazai firmly held her translucent body. With his fingertips, he held her tightly in his arms, but it couldn't delay her disappearance.

"Dazai." The lover in his arms said to him, "It's still too short."

Is there any way to keep her?

Osamu Dazai thought desperately and tried his best.

But he found, to his despair, how little he knew about her.

How can he grasp more of her existence and past, so as to find a way to break the predicament.

"You know why she feels fleeting?"

Bai Lan suddenly said to him.

Before Dazai Osamu responded, he continued on his own.

"Of course you don't know."

Huge pure white wings unfolded from behind Bai Lan.

"However, because of Cheng, this time I can... make an exception and tell you the answer to your question."

Bailan's wings fell down, as if the sky was falling before his eyes, but when it passed through Dazai's body, he realized that the feathers were white flames. After the flames dissipated, the world Dazai lived in was different from the original one. —Pure darkness greeted his arrival.

At the same time, Cheng was no longer in his arms.

"This is a temporarily constructed 'gap'." Bai Lan's voice sounded in the darkness, "There is no time and space in the traditional sense here, and the law of causality cannot be reached for the time being, so even you can understand some things in this way. The essence of things... read on."

When his voice fell, the concept of "light" came late. Osamu Dazai lowered his head and saw flowing light spots at his feet. These continuously and slowly moving particles constitute a giant tree that grows in reverse Dazai and Prynne stood above one of the massive root systems.

The giant tree below them seemed to be in a mirror world, with roots connected to stems, and then branches.The branches spread out, and new branches branched out of them, and they continued to extend like this, opening up to the invisible border.

"This is the world tree... But of course, there is no such tree in reality, but when it perceives your observation, it naturally presents itself in a way that you can understand." Bai Lan said, "Just like you What I see, no matter how different worlds are, all grow from the same root system, this is the original truth that all things depend on, and it is the common cornerstone of every world.”

He snapped his fingers, and the World Tree immediately dimmed, while the roots under their feet suddenly brightened, the flow of particles accelerated, the light path continued to spread, and finally transmitted to the leaves at the end of a certain branch.

Dazai narrowed his eyes, and after being illuminated, he realized that it was not a single leaf, but two similar leaves overlapped together.

"This is the reason why the two worlds can be merged—the one where you are, and the one where Hecheng is." He smiled, "Yes, if you don't do this, it's like people can't step into the same world twice. River, Cheng can't go back to the place she once arrived at."

"So, Cheng has been leaving one world and heading to another?"

Dazai asked.

"Yes."

Bai Lan replied.

"Because she is an observer of the World Tree."

"...?"

"Space is bound by the concept of time, and cannot freely cross horizontally."

Bai Lan picked up the dot of light with her fingertips, and then brushed it away. As soon as the particles returned to their positions, they couldn't wait to flow along the trajectory to the end.The huge and endless space particles that are out of the category of quantity work conscientiously and strictly on their own paths, without intersecting or interfering with each other.

"They are independent, but they must not be divorced from the common truth, otherwise the world without its cornerstone will collapse instantly. In order to prevent such things from happening, the world tree needs to observe each world and calibrate the coordinates separately. Since the world tree is the world It is the root of a thousand worlds, it cannot observe itself, so it handed over this matter to the 'river' independent of itself."

"Cheng is this 'river' that has to pass through all the leaves, right." Osamu Dazai asked calmly, "Why her?"

"..."

After a while, Bai Lan said.

"It's not that 'Cheng' has become 'River', but 'River' has become 'Cheng'." He said, "Because only human beings are considered capable of being an 'observer', so she was born as a real human being. .”

——"This is the cruelest thing for her."

Dazai was silent for a while.

"Where is she now?"

"She is asleep." Bai Lan's voice became low, and within reach, a white cocoon gently lit up, "Her consciousness is dreaming in the cocoon, unless someone enters the dream and wakes her up... ..."

Osamu Dazai touched the cocoon without hesitation, and the shell containing Cheng's sleeping consciousness did not resist him.

Dazai entered Cheng's dream.

# # #

Even Dazai Osamu did not think of the fact that the landing point would be in the water, but fortunately he may be the person with the most experience in falling into the water in the world, so he struggled hard until he was dragged ashore by a pair of hands.

"Huh...thank you."

After being saved, Osamu Dazai realized that the hand holding him was unexpectedly small. He raised his face, and what caught his eyes was a very small girl in a white skirt.

The girl crouched in front of him, watching him intently, and when she met Dazai's gaze, she smiled at him.

He said blankly, "I am Osamu Dazai."

"yes."

The girl took his hand, trying to pull him up, but she was indeed as small and light as she looked, and although she tried very hard, she still failed.

"It's the first time I've met someone other than me here—anyway, get up quickly... Ah!"

Osamu Dazai sat up, and the other party loosened his strength and fell backwards. When she couldn't help screaming out of fear, Osamu Dazai grabbed her wrist and brought her back to avoid the bad luck of landing on the back of her head.

"Wow, it's so dangerous, thank you."

She patted her skirt and sat down beside Osamu Dazai.

"My name is Cheng."

Osamu Dazai's eyes gently stayed in the sparkling light in her eyes: "I know."

"Really?" she said in surprise, "I thought we were meeting for the first time."

She turned her face away, and Dazai followed her line of sight to look into the distance, and as far as he could see, there was only the vast ocean.And the place the two of them were in was just a floating island that was too small to be called land.

"Have you been here all alone?"

Dazai asked.

"Not always alone."

The little girl told him.

"Sometimes my little island hits strange land, where there are lots of other people."

"Then why do you say that I am the first person I met here?"

"Because! Because oh!" She was very frankly pleased. "No one has ever been to my island before you!"

"Why, don't you like them coming here?"

"no."

The girl shook her head.

"The island can't take them away, but I have to leave, so none of them can come here."

Dazai said softly.

"So it is."

The sea is very calm now, and the waves are beating on the reef, which is so gentle that it makes people feel a little sad.

"Do you want them to come to you, even just for a moment?"

"...I don't know." She closed her eyes and buried her face in her knees, "but they shouldn't have come."

"Shouldn't it?"

"I also vaguely noticed that after the farewell, I don't seem to see anyone else again." She said, "In this case, it's better to forget about me, right—but, big brother, actually..."

She paused for a moment, turned half of her face away, and secretly looked at Dazai.

"This is my secret, but for some reason, I feel like I can tell my big brother... will you keep it a secret?"

"Yes, I will."

"I've actually been wanting to try and sink out of the ocean," she said. "I thought, maybe I'll see schools of glowing fish, and lighthouse jellyfish and super-sized squid, and most importantly, do it. If so, I must die, right?"

——“Sometimes, I want to die.”

She smiled shyly.

"It would be great if I could tell others about the fish, jellyfish or squid I ate, and the girl who was eaten was called 'Cheng'."

"Big brother, this is my wish."

"..."

Osamu Dazai put his arms around the girl's shoulders, making the two depend on each other.

"Is it my turn to tell my secret... Ah, can this really be called a secret?" He couldn't help laughing himself, "I want to die every moment."

"Do you want to die too?" She wondered, "Why is that?"

"Well, there's a whole hour and a half to talk about why," he said. "So, do you want to kill yourself with me?"

"I do not want."

The girl thought for a while and said cautiously.

"It seems like I'd feel bad if I did that."

"Really." Osamu Dazai was not surprised by her answer, "Then just choose another way."

He said.

"Cheng, I may have discovered that you are of the same kind - what a poor, tragic death seeker, maybe I was attracted to this kind of you."

The little girl looked up at him quietly, without speaking.

Osamu Dazai stopped suddenly.

"I need you more than anyone."

and so.

"Ah Cheng, come back for me."

Cheng, who hadn't grown up in time, opened his eyes wide.

Her dream began to collapse at the junction of the sea and the sky, the deep and light blues peeled off like a disrupted puzzle, the waves began to roar and roll restlessly, and the small island where the two were located was swaying in the turmoil.

Osamu Dazai held her hand and stood up, wanting to wrap the little girl in a windbreaker, but the one who raised her face from his arms and stared into his eyes was a woman he was familiar with who had experienced pain and growth.

"Dazai."

She said softly, standing on tiptoe a little.

At the moment when the huge waves submerged the two of them, she gently kissed her.

# # #

"Did you have a good dream, Cheng?"

When she opened her eyes, she heard Bai Lan asking her this, so Cheng replied thoughtfully.

"Generally speaking...it's a good dream."

"It turned out to be a question that requires thinking to answer? It hurts me a little bit."

"Dazai?" Cheng asked him with a little surprise, "Do you really think you belong to the kind of healing men that are popular nowadays?"

Just as Osamu Dazai was about to answer, Bai Lan raised his hand with a smile, and after snapping his fingers, a gust of wind hit, blowing all the space particles to pieces.

"Basically." Bai Lan said tactfully, "I still hope that my feelings can be respected by others."

"...I would like to apologize for this." Cheng said sincerely, "But, I think it's time for you to tell us why we came, Bai Lan."

"That's right," he said, "I'm here to ask about your choice, Cheng."

"Choose?" Cheng repeated in a low voice, while looking at the branches and leaves of the giant tree, "This is, space?"

"Yes."

Prynne nodded, and he opened the box in his hand. The third power of seven—seven Vongola rings, Mare rings, and the pacifier of the Child of the Rainbow floated around him, emitting a faint light.

"I want to use the third power of seven to completely replace the cornerstone of the world and separate this world from the world tree... In this way, you can get rid of the fate of being an observer and stay in this world forever."

"... Observer."

Cheng muttered to himself, then asked.

"Then what am I going to pay for it?"

"I don't think this is the price." Bai Lan laughed. "First of all, you will no longer be able to travel to other worlds, including the world where Mr. Dazai is currently briefly overlapping. In addition, although you are separated from the trajectory, Your observer nature has not been altered, therefore..."

"In this world, you will gain eternal life."

Cheng was silent for a long time, she didn't look at anyone until she spoke again.

"Thank you, Prynne," she said, "but I don't want to—"

"Wait, I have a question."

Osamu Dazai interrupted her.

"Does the observer have to be Cheng?" he asked, "Can't other humans do that?"

"What a stupid question. Ordinary human beings can't even fully realize space spanning with their souls. Even if they stay in such a temporary space, they will be torn apart by the turbulent flow of time and space..."

Bai Lan stopped and stared at Osamu Dazai with strange eyes.

"The ability that exists in your essence is erasure. Concepts outside of human consciousness are judged as 'supernatural powers' by your ability, which protects you from damage from time and space." He laughed, "In this way, The method you proposed is not infeasible..."

"So far."

Cheng raised her voice, it was the first time that she dropped her gentleness so completely.

"This kind of feasibility is not needed." She couldn't even suppress her anger, "Don't do unnecessary things."

Dazai looked at her for a long time, his eyes filled with love.

But when he spoke, he was not talking to his lover.

"Please, Mr. Bailan."

Without giving Cheng time to react, Bai Lan's flames formed a shackle that restrained her actions.

"It's about a spur of the moment, for me." Dazai said to her, "The result I'm going to face is really terrible, so I have to make a decision before I can't move because of fear."

"Osamu Dazai—"

"Cheng, I actually have a small wish right now."

He cupped his lover's face.

"I was thinking, if now you could question my love for you like a vexatious wife."

"So I can tell you that I would do anything for you."

He kissed Qin Cheng's brow.

"anything."

"As long as you have the freedom to die as a human being—as Cheng."

Their positions are constantly changing. Bai Lan seized the extremely short gap created by the coordinate jump, and stripped Cheng's "observer" essence into the ring of Oku Mare, which was awarded to Osamu Dazai.

When they returned to the world tree's vision again, the fate of the "observer" had been transferred to another person's soul.

Osamu Dazai began to feel the repulsion of space to him, and he was being pushed into the torrent of particles by an irresistible huge force.

As he sank into the sea of ​​time and space, he remembered the moment when Cheng said goodbye to him a long time ago.Osamu Dazai thought, at this moment he seemed to be able to understand her mood, otherwise he would not want to say the same words as her, but he still couldn't bear to say "love" at the moment of parting. Was he really less cruel than she?

Such thoughts kept turning in his mind, so that when he heard Cheng's voice, he subconsciously thought it was his hallucination.

"Osamu Dazai, I will never forgive you!"

However, has his Ah Cheng ever said such a thing to him?

"I will never, ever forgive you!!"

She probably cried so much that she could hardly get the words out.

He had never seen Cheng cry in such a way before, so even Osamu Dazai couldn't help feeling guilty, even if it was just the voice in his head, he also hoped that she...

"Come back soon, Dazai."

what.

"Come back to me."

I……

Osamu Dazai thought dazedly.

Yes, I want to go back to her.

I obviously just found her back, why did I have to say goodbye to her forever in this way.

He began to feel anger belatedly.

The barrier between them is so huge and indestructible.

But even calling it fate doesn't change the fact that it's abominable.

disappear.

I want to go back to her crying.

--Human disqualification.

click.

The sound of breaking was inaudible.A small crack appeared on the face of Mare's ring.

The cracks gradually widened and deepened, and finally at a certain limit, the will and ability to shatter the unreasonable things completely shattered the destiny called "The Predictor". Even the omnipotent and omniscient World Tree had to withdraw its glance at this moment .

Osamu Dazai was dragged out of the sea of ​​time and space by his collar.

This process was really embarrassing, the other party seemed to have completely forgotten to be gentle with him, Dazai Osamu didn't know when they returned to the middle school where the Ring War ended, and they had just escaped from the terrible future of farewell to their lover and immortality When he came out, Osamu Dazai, who was rubbed against the hard and sensible concrete floor, felt pain everywhere, but he still couldn't help laughing, so much that he had to adjust his breathing to relieve the pain in his lungs.

"Huh, I... oh, niceshot."

Osamu Dazai, who was hit in the stomach by the woman who straddled him, breathed a little more quickly.

"Ha, ha, Ah Cheng." While brushing back his sweaty forehead hair, he wrapped his arms around the other's waist and let her get close to him, "Did I finally do the right thing this time? "

"You're just a wayward bastard."

Cheng said to him.

"I haven't forgiven you yet."

"So……"

Time was still standing still, but the footsteps belonging to the third person sounded, Osamu Dazai looked at Bailan vigilantly, but the other person stopped not too close.

"Should I say it's over?" The white-haired young man sighed, "It's such an unexpected ending."

"You..." Osamu Dazai paused and asked, "Why?"

"Which thing did your 'why' refer to? Why did you tell the truth, or why did you bring Cheng to you..."

"At the moment when the ring was broken, I saw something." Osamu Dazai said, "I think it was someone's memory."

Dazai didn't continue, but he asked again.

"So, why?"

"Why." The ring of Mare that carried the memory has been annihilated, but Bai Lan's eyes seem to follow the traces of smoke and dust back to the unknown long time ago, "Because the person who once belonged to me has gone and I can't help it." I have arrived, and after becoming a god, I am more and more sure of this."

"But among the countless world lines that caught my eyes, there are still tiny glimmers of light."

"Although you are not reconciled, you did catch it in your own way." Bai Lan shrugged, "In the beginning, I did want to be the villain, but since that's the case, I have no choice but to leave the scene..."

"Bryn."

Bai Lan looked at her.When he met Cheng's gaze, his heart still trembled slightly.

"Do you want me to ask you anything?"

"..."

Bai Lan smiled slightly.

"No need, it's fine as it is now."

"it is good."

she says.

"Anyway, thank you for everything you've done for me."

"—I actually think it's time to say goodbye."

Dazai chimed in.

"Indeed, time has stopped here for too long." Bai Lan laughed, "However, Mr. Dazai, although you should already know it, but let me emphasize again, I am actually an existence equivalent to a god. So if one day I change my mind..."

"It won't let you take advantage of it."

"That would be all the better."

Bai Lan spread her wings and nodded gracefully.

"Goodbye."

The moment he left, time started running again, and various noises from people and other things filled the space again.

"So, when will you forgive me, Cheng?"

Amidst the reassuring noise, Osamu Dazai asked softly.

"Probably not soon."

Chung handed Dazai his hand.

——"After all, this time, I have enough time to be angry with you."