Dazai has spent the last two hours studying Chuuya's face trying to find the cracks that allowed yesterday's apathy to pour in, but all he found were freckles and beauty marks.

That 's no surprise. These festering wounds rarely ever show up on the surface; instead, they hide in the deepest part of one 's soul, feeding off the darkness like parasites and growing, growing, growing until they have infested everything.

Somehow, though, Dazai made the stupid assumption that Chuuya was immune to this kind of sickness. In no way is he invincible or unbreakable ' no matter how often he acts like it; that much has become obvious over the last month, but '

But he was supposed to be stronger than Dazai, at least.

That endless resilience of his was supposed to protect him from the untamable beast that nested somewhere inside Dazai during his childhood and has refused to leave ever since.