1 This isn't the Morgue...

Dazai opened her eyes.

The overhead lights were painfully bright, buzzing in the way cheap fluorescents do. Her head felt like cotton wool, and her eyes burned with sensitivity and exhaustion, but Dazai Osamu was very much still alive.

Shit.

"Ah, I see you're finally awake. Welcome back to the land of the living, my dear, you were out for quite a while."

The voice cut through the darkness, deep, masculine and bodyless. In fact, Dazai would have believed the sound was coming from some kind of monitor if she hadn't caught the glint of a stethoscope from someplace behind the door.

As she strained her neck in that direction, the voice stepped closer, their shoes clacking against the tiled floor. She still couldn't see his face, but at least now she could make out his figure, a shadow not quite as dark as the rest of the darkness beyond the room.

Dazai rolled her head back.

"I should've known better than to jump in broad daylight." She grumbled through an oxygen mask, her own voice thick and raw with disuse, cutting at her throat like broken glass.

Fuck, she was thirsty.

The voice didn't seem to pick up on her discomfort (or maybe he did, and that's what he found so funny) as he laughed, a loud, brassy sound that echoed through the empty room and bounced off the hollow walls.

"Yes, my dear, you should have."

He took another step forward and the fluorescents kissed the outline of his figure, greedily flooding it with light until the vague black blob he had been only moments before became the white of a doctor's coat and the green of his dress pants. He wore a purple shirt and brown shoes, and the tips of his hair remained black as he stepped forward again and the white lights reached his pale face.

"I'm your doctor, Mori Ougai. It's a pleasure to meet you, Dazai-san."

Dazai tried to fight the way her eyes widened.

Being patched up by some shady underground doctor wasn't too out of the ordinary for her, but she never left a name and it wasn't like they were keeping records of their patients anyway. As far as Dazai knew, she didn't even have a birth certificate, and it wasn't like Mori – with his crisply pressed shirt and expensive-looking watch – was from anywhere near her neighbourhood.

So, how did he know her name?

The doctor gave a cruel smile, his violet eyes lit up with some kind of sadistic amusement at her apparent confusion, and Dazai thought that in that moment he looked rather like a wolf – a predator playing with his food.

"You were brought to this hospital after you attempted suicide." He continued. "Do you remember?"

Dazai looked to the ceiling, counting the cracks. She didn't care for this conversation.

"I do that a lot. Could you refresh my memory?"

"You threw yourself off of the Ooka river almost a week ago. I saw you jump and pulled you out."

"Ah, I see!" She hummed sarcastically. "I guess that makes you my hero!"

"I won't pretend I rescued you for any selfless reasons." He shrugged. "In fact, I was already looking for you when I found your body in that river. You see, I happen to be one piece down in the game of chess I'm playing, and I'd like you to be my queen. And, of course, it'll be good to have a woman around the house."

"What exactly do I get out of this?"

"Well, I'd bore you with the financial details, but you don't strike me as the type to care about money, or material objects. Let's just say, working so close to life and death, you might just find a reason to live."

A reason to live, huh?

That might be nice.

"Tell me, Dazai, have you ever heard of an organisation known as the Port Mafia?"

The young girl nodded.

"Congratulations. You just became its newest member."