Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 5 Chapter 5 Part 5

5—5

“You act as though you know everything, yet you actually know nothing.”
A serene voice echoed within the partially destroyed hall. Standing in the center of the room, which was once the highest floor of Skull Fortress, was Fyodor. He was still holding Tatsuhiko Shibusawa’s skull, unfazed by neither the dragon nor the destruction. He gently let go of the skull, but it continued to float in the air. Fyodor smiled as he appeared to talk to the hovering cranium.
“There’s no stopping the fog now,” he whispered. “The earth will become a fruit of death—a dead apple…”
He then implanted a crystal fragment into the skull’s forehead. A red light flickered. It was but a modest gift from him—a fragment of the crystal that summoned skills together. Fyodor had taken the crystal he’d offered Dazai and secretly hidden a piece of it.
“And with this, you will become a singularity,” he boasted.
A singularity occurred when multiple skills interacted to produce a new result. Nobody exactly knew what skills could be combined to create a singularity, much less what effect said singularity would have. And yet, Fyodor intentionally created one and continued to steer the situation in his favor.
The skull shook as it began to absorb the remnants of the dragon Chuuya had destroyed.
The singularity began.
Venomous red bands born from the skull twisted space and time until the skull was given a new flesh-and-blood body. Fyodor watched it shine as the red bands curled around it, creating a single form. Pale fingers slowly took shape, and long white hair fluttered in the wind.

Atsushi was still standing in the room frozen in time while Chuuya was defeating the dragon and Fyodor was creating the singularity. On the other side of the door that had appeared amid the fog was a memory of what happened six years ago. It was the room where Atsushi had sinned. The victim, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, suddenly declared:
“I remember everything now.”
Shibusawa clearly recalled the events from six years ago.
Fyodor had enticed him to go to the orphanage where he tortured a young Atsushi…until Atsushi fought back and killed him. Everything made sense to him now. Shibusawa had always been searching for something. He had been searching for the missing piece—the memories he lost six years prior.
He’d believed that Dazai’s skill was the key to solving the mystery, and he knew if he released such a grandiose amount of fog within Yokohama, he would be able to catch him. Just as he expected, Dazai approached him, pretending to be on his side so he could get rid of the fog. Shibusawa saw right through Dazai’s scheme, but he welcomed him with open arms and feigned ignorance, then waited for his chance to strike. Dazai danced in the palm of his hand, just as he expected. Little did Dazai know that Fyodor was actually working with Shibusawa, and he let his guard down. That was the moment Shibusawa had been waiting for.
And so Shibusawa killed him. But he was mistaken.
Dazai’s skill wasn’t what Shibusawa was after. The key to filling in the gaps in his memories was not Dazai’s but Atsushi’s skill. And most importantly…
“What I was really after all this time was not skills, but the spark of life that resists one’s own skill and prevails over one’s own fate… Like the spark you showed me.”
A spark with a thirst for life. That was what Shibusawa had been searching for, and nothing brought him greater joy than experiencing that spark. Even six years ago, he tested countless hypotheses in pursuit of it.
Shibusawa was overcome with bliss. It was his first taste of happiness. And now, the owner of the spark had appeared once again before him. Atsushi was the only one who could grant him light.
Shibusawa fixed his fiery gaze on Atsushi. He wanted to experience that joy once more, and he made his desire clear.
“Your soul demonstrated that will to live when you killed me… So show me your soul—your spark!”
Shibusawa’s pale fingers crumbled away, and his white hair began to vanish.

As Shibusawa slowly disappeared from the room of memories past, his body simultaneously took shape around his skull in Draconia. The red bands of light formed into his flesh like a lizard regenerating its tail. A new dragon was born from the singularity using the skull and red crystal as its vessel. The young man’s white overcoat cloaked his smooth, pale skin, and his long, white hair fluttered in the wind. He could only be described as beautiful if not for the large claw-shaped scars marring his visage. On his forehead was a red crystal reminiscent of a dragon’s horn. His crimson eyes creased with a vacant, sadistic smile. Tatsuhiko Shibusawa had been reborn as a skill-like life-form—a divine being that wielded the power of the dragon.
But his wish was still the same. He wanted to drive Atsushi into a corner so he could experience that spark once more. He wanted Atsushi to experience even more pain and torture than he did six years ago. This was a natural conclusion for Shibusawa to reach, for he believed that life was at its strongest and most beautiful when it was being pushed over the edge. Therefore, he was going to muster every bit of strength he possessed. He was going to cover the world in the red fog he had newly acquired.
The red fog began swallowing the earth. “…”
Nobody would ever see the smile on Fyodor’s face.