Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 Chapter 1 Part 8

There were no bells and whistles to Verlaine’s remark. This wasn’t a negotiation. It was a simple, transparent suggestion…or perhaps even an order.
“Brother, you are not human. You are nothing more than a string of characters. You are a simple equation without a soul. That is what true loneliness is. No one can save you from your isolated chamber… But what if a desolate, lonely comet had another comet of the same temperature by its side? A comet that was just as lonely?”
Verlaine spoke as if he were a poet reciting an ancient tale, and his eyes were a waterway of affection—a gaze one would give only to their most treasured kin.
“So that’s what you want?” Chuuya stood up. “You came all the way here for that?”
“This isn’t the only time I’ve come for you. I’ve been dreaming of setting off on a journey with you ever since I attacked my dear friend to steal you away on that day nine years ago.”
Verlaine closed his eyes. The powerful force around him weakened even further. He now looked no different from any ordinary man idly sitting on the roadside.
“We can go on an assassination run together as brothers. All we have is a meaningless life. So how about we grant our creators a similar fate? A meaningless death—that should balance things out. A death without discrimination between the good and the wicked. Only then…”
Verlaine closed his eyes. He wasn’t speaking like some extraordinary assassin. His voice was filled only with sadness, grief, and a faint, naive dream—all appropriate for a young man his age.
“Only then will we be able to live with and accept this meaningless life.”
Verlaine hopped off the car and held out his hand to Chuuya, who stared at it devoid of all emotion.
“You mustn’t, Chuuya,” protested Adam with his pistol drawn. “You’ll become an enemy of the entire world the moment you take that man’s hand.”
Adam calculated every possible scenario, but his pistol would be useless against Verlaine’s skill no matter how he fired.
“Stay out of this.”
It wasn’t Verlaine who spoke; it was Chuuya. Verlaine’s eyes showed a hint of surprise as he looked at the young mafioso.
“I understand where you’re comin’ from.” Chuuya tilted his head back slightly and fixed Verlaine with a piercing gaze. “But before I give you my answer, I need to ask something first.”
“Anything,” Verlaine replied, smiling.
“I got a call from Piano Man earlier. He said someone from the Port Mafia came to take the five of them somewhere for a job. Answer me: What happened to them?”
Verlaine’s smile disappeared. A few slow moments passed as a different kind of smirk twisted his lips like a black flower blooming—a most unpleasant smile.
“Well, you don’t need your old friends anymore, do you?” he answered.
Verlaine hit the trunk of the car stuck in the wall, and it opened. The next moment, something fell out and hit the ground with a sickening splat.
Chuuya instantly recognized it. His pupils narrowed like needles. It was Lippmann’s body.
Chuuya screamed. It wasn’t a human scream, but the howl of a beast— an unintelligible roar. That alone caused the surrounding buildings’ windows to shatter.
Then came his fist. It was a simple, straightforward thrust, and yet it surpassed the speed of sound. His fist shook the air like an explosion as it instantaneously slammed Verlaine backward, burying him in the wall and sending pieces of the building flying.
“Gwah—!” Verlaine groaned, but the moment he opened his eyes, Chuuya was already right in front of him. Chuuya’s expression wasn’t twisted, though. In fact, he was almost expressionless. There was only a pure, transparent, and overpowering desire to kill.
His right fist slammed into Verlaine’s shoulder; the surrounding wall cracked apart. But before the fragments of concrete could hit the ground, Chuuya buried his left fist in Verlaine’s torso, pushing him even farther into the wall. Another punch, then another, and then another. He roared as each hit buried Verlaine’s body deeper inside the building until it seemed to swallow him whole. But even then, Chuuya didn’t stop.
“You’re like a wild animal.”
Chuuya’s fist stopped on a dime as if those words were a cue.
Verlaine had caught his fist like a ball. He then countered with his own fist.
If Chuuya’s punches were like bullets, then Verlaine’s were cannonballs. They hit Chuuya directly in the stomach, twisting his shirt until it tore—but not where Verlaine’s fist connected. The powerful impact sent a shock wave through Chuuya’s body and ripped the back of his shirt. He groaned in agony. Meanwhile, Verlaine had such a tight grip on his fist that not even a punch could knock Chuuya backward.
“Rage like the beast you are. That’s how you’ll remember what you are, whether you want to or not.”
Verlaine crawled out of the wall and jumped to the ground. He then let go of Chuuya’s fist, grabbed him by the neck, and hung him in the air like a punching bag. Chuuya couldn’t move even if he wanted to, because his entire body was being held down by a powerful gravitational force. He couldn’t counter, much less lift his dangling arms.
“It all boils down to this, Chuuya. That was a yoke keeping you attached to humans,” Verlaine said gently as he held Chuuya up by his neck. “I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s too dangerous. You shouldn’t linger in that position.”
Verlaine stuck his free hand in Chuuya’s pocket in search of something. His fingers emitted a gravitational pulse that acted like radar, helping him find what he was looking for.
“So this is the picture your so-called friends gave you?”
It was the photograph of Chuuya as a child wearing a yukata by the ocean.
“I understand more than you realize how you must have felt when you saw it. And I understand how you trusted the people who gave this to you. Really, I do. But your trust in them will only cause you to suffer because they will continue to feed you these lies. “You’re human. Have hope. He’s lying to you,’ is what they’d say, poisoning your mind.”
Verlaine flicked his wrist and threw the photo like a projectile with unbelievable speed until it pierced Adam’s shoulder like a knife. Adam groaned in pain, dropping his pistol that he had been waiting for a chance to fire.
“Why do you think they’d lie to you?” asked Verlaine. He looked straight at Chuuya, entirely uninterested in whatever Adam was doing. “It’s because your powers are useful to them. They want to use you. I know because it happened to me, too.”
“I don’t give a damn… You’re gonna pay…,” Chuuya rasped, breathing heavily as he hung by his neck, unable to move.
“Such a troublesome boy.” Verlaine sighed. He paused after every few words as if he were talking to a small child. “But well, I figured you wouldn’t be so soft that a mere few words would convince you. That’s why I’m going to use my actions instead. I am going to cut the strings, one by one, that manipulate you like a marionette. And then you will be free. This is the greatest gift of brotherly love and the only thing that will bring you happiness.”
Then he added, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: “I am going to kill every human who matters to you.”
There was nothing but elegance and kindness in his voice. Yet in his eyes, a fire was burning. They held the pale-blue flames of hell’s gatekeeper, capable of freezing the souls of all humankind before scorching them into ash.
“You’re wrong,” Adam suddenly chimed in. “What you are doing is not love. According to the definitions of human emotion I have installed, what you have is a lust for domination.”
“And how’s that any different?” Verlaine asked, smiling sweetly. Numerous emotions appeared in Chuuya’s eyes as they talked: surprise,
trepidation, bewilderment, fear… But they were only brief flashes that ended up swallowed by an overpowering fire: the flames of rage.
“I won’t let you.” Chuuya’s throat shook like the rumbling of the earth. “I’m not gonna let you have your way, no matter what.”
Verlaine gave a refreshed smile. He acknowledged and accepted those feelings.
“That’s fine.”
There was even a note of affection and tenderness about him.
“You need time to choose, ruminate, and come to terms with reality, but you will do as I say in the end. Allow me to show you why.”
The unusual sensation started the moment Verlaine gently placed his free hand on Chuuya’s cheek.
“Gwah…!”
The air vibrated before bursting open. An invisible electric discharge caused his eyes to spark reddish-black. Chuuya opened his mouth, but he couldn’t breathe. His throat refused to suck in air…because something terrifying was trying to crawl out.
“I’m going to open your Gate just a little,” Verlaine cooed as if he were singing a lullaby. “But not by much. Only about a hairbreadth, nothing more. The opening will be small enough to close in the blink of an eye—but that’s all it will take for you to see the truth.”
The wind howled. It was not of this world, however. It was coming from inside Chuuya—from an unknown, frightening place the human eye could not reach.
The wind caused the surrounding buildings to creak and the earth to shake. Adam struggled to remain standing as he observed Chuuya with his eyes nearly squinted shut.
“Detecting a skill-phase expansion. Hawking radiation-esque high- energy rays observed. Values steadily increasing.”

Adam was automatically outputting the details of the calamity.
“Phase transition is causing heat to emerge from the space of annihilation… Oh no!” he yelled while emptying the clip in his pistol. The special antipersonnel bullets slammed into Verlaine’s forehead, eyes, throat, and elbows. However…
“Would the audience please refrain from touching the actors?”
The bullets lightly grazed his skin and froze in place. A powerful gravitational force almost immediately shot them back in the opposite direction, piercing Adam’s shoulder. He cried out in pain and fell to the ground.
That was when Chuuya screamed at the top of his lungs. This soulless shriek wasn’t Chuuya’s own; it wasn’t even human. It was neither something of this world nor even a sound.
It was the black flames.
“Am I too late…?! Activating heat- and impact-resistant shield!” Adam shouted from the ground, raising his left arm. His elbow immediately split in half and expanded into a glittering silver shield. The superalloy shield, made with a nickel base, chrome, iron, molybdenum, and titanium, completely enshrouded Adam as he jumped to his feet and retreated.
“Now, Chuuya. Do you still think you’re human?” Space began to warp. And then—hell was unleashed.

Black flames. The scorching torrent that had melted the ground and created Suribachi City.
It was just as Verlaine had said. The gate to hell was open for a mere 0.3 seconds, but that was more than long enough
The extreme heat erupting from the alley melted a utility pole and boiled the asphalt until it began flowing over to the main road like a surging wave. That, however, was nothing more than the opening act for the true hell that unfolded.
Everything around Chuuya began to disappear—like paint that had melted and was being sucked away. Only a black sphere remained.
The air trembled. One side of a nearby eight-story building vanished as if it had been chewed off. The steel frame, concrete walls, floors, ceiling, the fixtures—it was all gone. It was neither destroyed nor melted. It had simply disappeared.
And not just the building, either. Melted streetlights, parked cars, asphalt, and even the ground beneath it—everything was being absorbed into the swelling black sphere.
The annihilation spread. Buildings turned into rubble, soil into dust, and the nearby cars, utility poles, and fire hydrants all toppled over before the sphere swallowed them up. While it appeared black, the sphere in fact had no pigment. An extremely powerful gravitational force was pulling the surrounding light inside and preventing it from escaping—that was what made the sphere look black.
This was a calamity far more fearsome than any explosion or chemical reaction. It involved space itself.
A black hole. The eye of the darkest demon had opened and was effortlessly chewing up and swallowing the street.
The phenomenon was over almost instantaneously. The black sphere vanished just as soon as it appeared. That was why the people a few buildings away were not harmed, surprisingly enough. But they were still witness to a nightmarish scene, one that saw the nearby townscape devoured by darkness.

In the center of this hell was Chuuya—suffering.
Yet this was no ordinary suffering. He felt as if his skin was being twisted until it split apart; his eyes seemed to rupture in their sockets while his organs were being crushed. Only some otherworldly beast could cause such agony. But Chuuya couldn’t even so much as scream.
The ground vanished as if it had been scooped out with a giant spoon. At the resulting crater’s center lay Chuuya curled on the ground.
The air shimmered in the extreme heat. When the black hole eventually disappeared, a powerful gamma ray burst, flooding the environs with blindingly bright light before scorching and melting the earth.
Particles of evaporated metals sparkled in the air as they wandered the skies. The shimmer created by the heat made everything in sight beautifully contort and dance. A utility pole melting in the distance leaned over as if it were bowing in apology.
Although the black hole had closed, the aftereffects continued to cause irregularities in the gravitational field. The space around Chuuya suddenly warped before closing. Like aftershocks of an earthquake, space intermittently convulsed and gouged out the earth before returning to normal again. These fluctuations made Chuuya suffer.
A shadowy figure approached him and stopped by his side.
A mysterious figure, too short to be an adult, was dressed in a black coat, and had bandages wrapped around his head. Most mysterious was the fact that he stood calm and composed, despite the irregularities in the gravitational field.
“You’re a mess, Chuuya.”
The teenager effortlessly grabbed Chuuya’s arm and lifted it. That same moment, the gravitational irregularities vanished along with Chuuya’s suffering.
“Tsk… Had to be you, huh…?”
“You can’t even go out with good grace, can you?” the youth said bluntly before hoisting Chuuya onto his shoulders.
He began to walk. The overpowering gravity was gone, as was the pain, causing Chuuya to rapidly lose consciousness. But before his eyes gave in to the darkness, he looked back at the youth and muttered in frustration:
“Dazai…”