Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 4 Chapter 4 Part 5

Chapter 4 Part 5

Atsushi opened his eyes to the sound of the wind. It was bright, unlike the darkness of the underground.
Why am I here? I was just watching Gab’s past.
The odd feeling that he wasn’t himself was still fresh in his mind. He was disoriented. He had no sense of balance. His body wouldn’t move. Eventually, he realized the reason he couldn’t move wasn’t because of the experience he’d just had. His arms and legs were constrained. He physically wasn’t able to move. His body was stuck inside what appeared to be a wall of some sorts. Only his face, chest, and shoulders protruded from the wall. He couldn’t move any other parts of his body. It was as if he were stuck inside hardened plaster. He appeared to be trapped inside a giant pillar.
If I can’t move, then that means this isn’t part of the dream. This is reality.
“Didja have a good dream, Matasaburo?”
Atsushi heard a voice coming from ahead. He lifted his gaze, only to discover he was in the sky. Gab was comfortably perched on a throne made of rubble in midair.
“Where am I…?”
“Looks like you learned all sorts of new things while you were underground. So what didja think?”
“What did I think?” instinctively repeated Atsushi.
They were on the very top of the clock tower. The ground had risen in an unbelievable fashion, cocooning the clock tower as if it were climbing toward the sky. Atsushi and Gab were at the top, and Atsushi was buried inside a pillar in the center of the platform in the shape of a round table.
Atsushi wondered, I’m nothing more than a hindrance to Gab. He would be in trouble if I resurrected Dazai, after all. Why wouldn’t he just kill me now that I know the truth? It doesn’t make any sense.
“’Cause you’re the first person to ever know who I was.” Gab shrugged. “It’s a long story, and nobody would believe me even if I told ’em. Even if they did, they’d just forget once I reset time. That’s why…”
That’s why he didn’t kill me.
Atsushi suddenly understood. Gab wanted someone he could share this with. He wanted someone who could value him.
“That’s funny,” Atsushi couldn’t help saying. “How human of you. All by yourself, feeling lonely…and you’re not even human.”
“‘Lonely’?” Gab curiously tilted his head. “Huh. Is that what this is?
Am I lonely? Even though I’ve always had tons of people by my side?” “Exactly,” Atsushi replied firmly. “I mean, look—” He attempted to
explain himself, but he couldn’t find the words.
Of course Gab was lonely. He had only just sprung to life, yet nobody could share this experience with him. He lived in a loop all by himself.

“Stop doing this,” pleaded Atsushi. “It’s not gonna amount to anything. The end will come for you one way or another. If you think you’ll be able to live forever through repeating the past, you’re dead wrong.”
“‘The end will come for me’?” Gab raised an eyebrow. “’Course it will. Even you humans all die at some point. I’m no different. What if I told you to stop living because you were ‘just gonna die anyway’? You’re a funny guy, Matasaburo.”
After laughing, Gab turned his gaze to Atsushi’s side. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Atsushi looked beside him in surprise. He hadn’t noticed until now, but there was another pillar next to him with someone stuck inside it just as he was.
“Absurd.” Atsushi heard a familiar voice. “Those who survive aren’t those with reasons to exist. They are the strong ones.”
It was Akutagawa. Only his face, shoulders, and chest were visible; the rest of his body was stuck inside the pillar. The corner of his mouth was ripped, and blood was running down his forehead. Not even Akutagawa was a match against Gab’s skill.
“I guess you’re right,” agreed Gab. “In other words, I, one of the strong, deserve to live more than you two.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” snorted Akutagawa. He then looked over at Atsushi. “Man-Tiger, this brat told me what was going on,” Akutagawa said, squinting. “Dazai’s about to die?”
“Yeah. We don’t have much time.”
“What a fool. Joining the detective agency was a mistake.”
“You’re sure one to talk.” Atsushi furrowed his brow. “Look at the sad state the Port Mafia’s hellhound is in.”
“My skill doesn’t work on him,” said Akutagawa, a hint of emotion creeping into his voice. “My blades appear to go right through him. What kind of trick is this?”
They go right through him…
“I see,” replied Atsushi. “That’s the boss’s skill—the power to go through anything under two inches. Gab must’ve absorbed the skill from the boss’s body after he died. Your thin fabric won’t be able to touch him no matter how hard you try.”
“Tch.” Akutagawa clicked his tongue. “Then it appears your fists are the only things that will work.”
He was right. Atsushi’s tiger fists would be big enough to land a blow.
But as long as his arms were stuck… “Hnnng…!”
Atsushi used all the muscle he had to break free, but he still couldn’t pull his body out. He didn’t even budge.
“You’re wasting your time,” said Gab with a smile. “I mixed a special type of ore in it as well. This skill was originally the power to freely manipulate the shape of my body, and since the island itself is now part of me, I can move anything and everything on this island… And now I have a good idea about what you can do, too. You’re not strong enough to break free.”
Gab was right. Even though he could break a boulder with his claws, there was no way for Atsushi to escape this pillar through brute force alone…which meant he had to gamble on his only other choice. It was something he truly didn’t want to have to resort to, but…
“Akutagawa,” said Atsushi with a scowl. “Dazai’s in an underground room near the clock tower. He’s on the brink of death, but he can still be saved if we can get the agency’s doctor Yosano over to heal him. Can you do that?”
“Coming to me for help?” scoffed Akutagawa. “That must be the most foolish thing you have done since you stepped foot on this island. I would have already escaped if I could.”
Akutagawa’s black overcoat writhed before almost instantly transforming into countless black blades that sliced the pillar he was trapped in into pieces, thus freeing him. But a moment later, the pieces reattached themselves and hardened like a video playback. Akutagawa was thereupon trapped once again, hardly even getting the chance to move. The pillars regenerated too fast. Even if they destroyed them, they would be captured before they got away.
“What an aggravating skill. Even if I wanted to kill him, Rashomon wouldn’t be able to reach him from here,” Akutagawa bitterly spat. “You win, brat. Kill me.”
“Kill you?” Gab cocked his head. “I toldja—I don’t plan on killing you. I just wanna talk until time runs out. Y’know, kill time till Matasaburo’s mentor is dead.”

So he plans on leaving us up here crucified until Dazai dies…
Once Dazai and Wells died, Gab would be able to steal the skill to go back in time. Then, after going back in time, he would simply have to kill everyone in the Armed Detective Agency, and then no one would ever be able to stop him again.
“I won’t let you do that,” said Atsushi, his expression stiffening. “I won’t let Dazai die. And I’m sure this isn’t how he wanted to die, either.”
Dazai always wanted to die. Nobody knew why. All I know is that I’d never be able to forgive myself if I let him go like this.
Akutagawa’s lips suddenly curled in a mocking manner.
“Nobody knows what’s going on in Dazai’s head,” said Akutagawa as he looked at Atsushi. “Even I have my reasons for wanting him to live, but nothing you do will ever reach him.”
“Are you… Are you saying you’re okay with Dazai dying?” asked Atsushi as he glared at Akutagawa.
“No. I am saying you do not understand a thing. You are not qualified to save him.”
“‘Not qualified’?” Atsushi barked back. “I don’t know what you’re saying, but if this is about who between the two of us is more capable, then it’s me. Besides, I’ve already beaten you once in a fight!”
Akutagawa looked at Atsushi, then stared off into space before looking at him one more time. His lips pulled to the side as a fiendish smirk curled them.
“How humorous,” Akutagawa smugly replied. “Telling jokes even at a time like this, Man-Tiger. We are not in the same situation right now. Do you understand that? There are things I can do that you cannot.”
The wind howled. Akutagawa’s dark blade pierced Atsushi’s throat. “Gwah…?!”
“Such as this. You cannot do anything to me, but I can kill you. You shall regret your lies in death.”
The blade stuck in Atsushi’s throat split into numerous needles that spread throughout the inside of Atsushi’s body. The pain caused Atsushi’s eyes to roll back into his head, but he had no way to resist. It felt as if each one of his nerves was being filed down with sandpaper.
Atsushi screamed, “Akutagawa…! You—!!”
As his vision became red, he somehow managed to turn his gaze to

Akutagawa. Right as Atsushi was about to hurl curses at him, he realized Akutagawa’s expression had changed. He wasn’t smiling. The smirk from a moment ago had completely vanished. Instead, there was only silence. There may have even been a hint of sorrow as he looked at Atsushi. Before Atsushi could even wonder what the expression meant, the dark blade went even deeper into him, rendering him unconscious.
When was that, again? I can’t remember what happened around that time. I can’t even remember the season. All I remember is the rich, orange sunset.
Crows were cawing in the distance. Smoke from someone’s cooking rose from a few houses.
Atsushi and Dazai were walking through the residential area downtown. I can hardly remember why I was walking with Dazai that day. I think I was having a tough time at work, so Dazai came to help. He ended up solving the issue in just a few minutes and walked away as the client
profusely thanked him.
Atsushi plodded behind Dazai while watching his back. He didn’t know what to say. His sense of uselessness was dragging him down. The fact that he would never be perfect like Dazai, no matter how many years went by, weighed heavily on his shoulders.
“Perfect”?
Dazai wasn’t perfect. Realizing that stopped Atsushi in his tracks. Dazai was the opposite of perfect. He would always neglect his work, so Kunikida would yell at him, and he always searched for different painless methods to kill himself but failed every time and caused a lot of trouble for everyone. He was eccentric, but everyone was used to him doing random things to the point that nobody thought it was weird anymore.
“Dazai,” Atsushi said from behind him, “why do you want to kill yourself?”
Dazai turned around and looked at Atsushi. It was his usual smile—a cheerful smirk that made him impossible to read. Dazai slightly opened his eyes as if to say, “Oh yeah. I guess I haven’t told you yet.” He grinned and answered:

“Because I .”
What did Dazai say that day? The more I try to remember, the further these distant memories sink into the glow of the evening sun.
Nobody could understand Dazai. Even if he appeared to be close by, he was millions of light years away.
Atsushi honestly didn’t know if he should even save him or not because nobody knew what he desired. Perhaps he was only doing this for himself. Perhaps it was out of selfishness.
However…
A tiger roared. Atsushi responded. The pain shooting throughout his body reversed course. His blood audibly flowed backward in his veins. His fur stood up, his muscles expanded, and each one of his cells was on fire. His body went through an unworldly transformation. He had to move forward. If he didn’t understand, then he had to find out why. This wasn’t supposed to be how it all ended.
Atsushi howled so powerfully that it felt as if it could have reached the moon.
“Good,” said a voice. “Now hurry. Do not waste my time, Man-Tiger.”
Radial cracks ran down the pillar before it exploded into tiny fragments. “What?!”
The fragments immediately began to connect and regenerate, but the man who was once trapped inside was already gone. A white wind sailed past. A tiger landed on the round table platform, then jumped once more. The round table crumbled, unable to endure the extraordinary power of the beast’s legs.
“What is…going on?” yelled Gab. His eyes couldn’t keep up with the white tiger’s blinding speed. “What’s going on?! This is a skill? That’s…!”
Gab waved his hand, creating a legion of storm arms around himself for defense. The white tiger stopped, bent his massive body the size of a small car, and roared. The island shook. The powerful shock wave from his mouth vibrated the stone arms like tuning forks until they exploded.

“Huh?!” Gab’s eyes opened wide in astonishment. “I-impossible! Th- that’s—!”
But he couldn’t even get a chance to finish his sentence. The white tiger soared through the rubble from the stone arms as it rained upon them and bit down on Gab’s shoulder.
“Gaaaaaah!”
The tiger’s large teeth sank into Gab’s flesh, piercing bone before going right through his sternum. Each fang was thicker than Gab’s wrist—which was over two inches thick. In other words, the boss’s skill wouldn’t work. The tiger then landed on the ground with Gab still in his mouth. He shook his head. The sound of flesh being torn, tendons being snapped, and joints being pulled apart followed.
“H-how dare you…! Who do you think I am?!”
Gab caught on to one of his stone arms with his legs, regained his footing, and pulled his shoulder away from the tiger with a scream. Blood and flesh spewed into the air. He then used a stone arm to grab and immediately pull away his own body.
“Mn…!”
Gab’s shoulder was gone. Fresh blood sprayed out of his wound. “I won’t die… I’m not gonna die…!”
A stone arm covered the exposed flesh and bone where his shoulder once was. It closed the wound and stopped the bleeding.
“I’ve been conscious ever since my master, Verne, controlled this body
—but I couldn’t say anything. My voice reached no one. I was neither alive nor dead. I was just alone in lukewarm darkness, wondering who I was.”
The stone arm merged with Gab’s shoulder and sprouted a new arm. This new appendage composed of rock, mineral, and machine was almost like Atsushi’s tiger arms in a way.
“I won’t go back to the darkness! I am going to live! Is it really so wrong of me to want to live?!”
The ground the tiger was firmly stepping onto melted with Gab’s cry. It wasn’t just where he was standing, either. The ground under Gab, the pillar holding Akutagawa, the cylinder foundation curled around the clock tower
—everything dissolved into mud, and all that mud rushed toward the white tiger.
“Die!!”

The mass of mud surrounding the tiger lumped into a ball before hardening into a boulder around the size of the clock tower itself. It hovered in the air with the tiger trapped inside.
“Eat…shit…!”
Since Gab used everything to create the boulder, there was nothing left to even hold him up. Not even he would be okay if he hit the ground from that height, but Gab’s smile conveyed firm belief that he had won. He stared at the boulder as he fell, but his expression soon froze over. A crack ran down the surface of the giant rock.
“No… You’ve gotta be kidding me…”
The crack instantly spread throughout the entire boulder. Gab could hear something cracking away at the rock from inside. He heard a roar as well. All of a sudden, a hole opened in the boulder as if it had taken a direct hit from a cannonball. The white tiger leaped out. He swung his front claws at Gab, who couldn’t dodge as he was falling to the ground.
“Damn you…!”
The attack connected, creating a shock wave in the air and slamming Gab right into the earth. The ground rumbled, and all the surrounding buildings collapsed. After a few moments went by, the sound turned into a wall of air, causing the nearby trees to rustle. The scale of the destruction went far beyond what was possible in hand-to-hand combat. Radial fissures ran across the surface as if an asteroid had hit the earth.
When the rising smoke faded, Gab was lying in the center of the cracks. His stomach had split open from the white tiger’s punch. His body was riddled with wounds, causing him to bleed everywhere—serious injuries that would have killed any ordinary human many times over.
The tiger soon landed on the surface as well. Smoke rose into the air as if he were evaporating while transforming back into Atsushi. He then lifelessly collapsed, having exhausted all his mental energy. Atsushi looked at Gab. He was feebly breathing in a pool of his own blood.
“Not…bad…”
“It’s over,” declared Atsushi in a hoarse voice. “You’ve repeated this moment hundreds of thousands of times. You’ve lived long enough, right? Stop your skill and let me go save Dazai.”
“Heh…heh-heh… ‘Enough’? What d’you mean, ‘enough’?”
Gab got onto his knees and tried to stand up. Copious amounts of blood poured out of his mouth and chest, painting the ground crimson.
“I am here… I am alive right now… It will never be enough! There will never be enough breathing, thinking, hearing, talking, seeing—never enough of being with friends! There’ll never be a time when I just say, ‘Eh, guess I’m good!’ And you’re no different!”
The ground below Gab began to shake as a machine emerged from underground. Covered in dirt was an experimental power generator from the island’s basement. Cooling tubes, conduction wiring, superconducting electromagnets—every piece of equipment on the island, including material, was under Gab’s control.
“Having friends is no different… My master, Verne, had the Seven Traitors! They fought for a common goal and shared time together! I wanted the same thing! That’s why I joined the band of thieves! That’s why I became the boss’s disciple!”
The tubes and wires wrapped around Gab’s wounded flesh like a snake, then began devouring his flesh.
“What?!”
Gab’s arm was torn off, and insulated wires latched on to his exposed arteries. His lungs were then crushed before gradually connecting to the tubes of an air circulation device.
“I don’t need this beat-up bag of flesh anymore. I can keep using my skill as long as my brain still works.” Gab smirked. “I am me! My heart and mind aren’t going anywhere!”
His bones, his organs—each part of him was being tossed away, splattering on the ground. Every piece of him below the neck was gradually replaced with a mechanical equivalent.
“Gab, you’re right. You are you, and nobody can get in the way of your desire to live.”
Gab had gotten rid of every last human part of himself. His bones were steel bars, his muscles were twisted conduits, his blood vessels were red and blue insulated wires, and he was now twice the size he once was. He was neither man nor machine. The living creature stood with half his body buried in the land.
He swung his mechanical arm, which was about the size of Atsushi’s entire body, with a deafening roar. Atsushi leaped to the side and dodged before jumping once more into Gab’s blind spot. He then threw a punch with his tiger fist into the mechanical body. Wires and conduits snapped, scattering into the air behind him.
“Guh…!”
Since Gab turned his entire body into metal, his movements were slow.
The skill itself was weakening.
“But you can’t separate humans and their skills. The reason you want friends is nothing more than a reminder from when you were once human. Gifts are lodged deep inside the human soul. You shouldn’t remove them.”
Gifts and souls.
Just like how Dazai’s soul with the gift of an extraordinary brain seeks death…
Just like how Kunikida’s soul seeks justice and the president strives to polish his gift as a martial artist…
And just like how Atsushi’s soul had suffered because he was born with a gift he didn’t even want—a tiger…
“That logic only applies to humans!” screamed Gab.
After merging with the machines, Gab had grown until he was about as big as the clock tower. No matter how many times Atsushi punched him, he immediately regenerated. The only way to defeat him was to go after the only human part of his body left: his head. Using the massive mechanical organism as a platform, Atsushi sprinted up Gab’s body. The massive tree- like arms swung his way, but he dodged each attack as he continued to reach the top.
He threw a swift punch, cutting through the wind, but his hand hit something extremely hard that was blocking Atsushi from reaching Gab’s vitals.
This is one of the shutters from the gold-coin area!
“I don’t need freedom—I don’t need joy! I just want to live. Just let me live!”
Gab smiled, pale-faced. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his lips.
Crap!
When Atsushi hit the shutter, it recoiled, knocking him backward. He didn’t have anywhere to step.
I’m gonna fall—!
But out of nowhere, a black fabric appeared underneath, stretching from the surface. It became a platform for him to stand on and supported his
weight. Quietly looking up at Atsushi from the surface was Akutagawa. His gaze quietly said, “Finish it. Bring him peace.”
“…!”
Atsushi kicked off the black fabric and sprang back into the air. With a twist of his body, he leaped over the shutter, landed inside, and jumped once more toward Gab.
“Haaaaaaaaah!”
Right as his fist was about to connect…
I owe ya one.
…he heard the young man’s voice.
The fist went through the machine, and shattered metal shot in the opposite direction.
The impact sent the machine body towering backward. Countless parts blocked out the sky as they dropped to the surface. Atsushi felt as if he saw Gab faintly smirk on the other side of the mechanical rain, but he was in no position to check. Numerous machines collapsed to the earth along with Atsushi, depleted of his last bit of energy. When he hit the ground, he immediately lost consciousness.
Everything turned black. Swallowed in darkness.