Chapter 10

For a fleeting moment, Chuya Nakahara almost thought his eyes were deceiving him.

How could there be butterflies in a place like this? No, no—taking a step back, even if butterflies really did appear, there was no way they would be glowing.

He would rather believe this was another prank from Osamu Dazai.

But soon, Chuya was certain that this was no mere illusion; it was happening right before his eyes… in a dreamlike realm.

Accompanying the girl’s song, butterflies suddenly appeared in the pitch-black space, their forms and colors exquisitely enchanting. They emitted a faint purple glow in the darkness.

They fluttered and dispersed in all directions, adorning everything with a surreal, fairy-tale-like beauty as if it were a wonderland existing only in stories.

Then… the dark space began to undergo a remarkable transformation.

Wherever the butterflies passed, darkness receded, as if repelled by the radiant light that could pierce through it. After melting away like ice and snow, the darkness finally solidified into a small black cube, suspended before the singer.

She ceased singing, extended her hand, and the cube settled steadily into her palm.

Freed from the confines of darkness and bathed anew in overhead light, Chuya was surprised to notice a pair of small, dark crimson wings sprouting from the girl’s shoulder blades, resembling demonic bat wings.

Hey, hey—those definitely weren’t there before…

Chuya’s gaze lingered on the bat wings for a moment longer, only to be caught by Dazai’s sharp eyes. Dazai shifted sideways, blocking Chuya’s view. “Hey, hey, what’s a little shadowy guy staring at?”

“That ability, Dazai, don’t tell me you don’t know about it.” This time Chuya wasn’t provoked by his words—or rather, even if he were annoyed, he restrained himself because there were more important matters to address.

But Dazai interrupted him mid-sentence, exclaiming with feigned surprise, “Are you going to play the snitch now, Chuya?”

His eyes and tone suddenly turned cold, without a trace of his earlier playful facade. “As you can see, Chuya, the singer should be a star standing offstage.”

The implication was clear: don’t drag her into their world.

Chuya pressed down on his cap impatiently. “Enough! You don’t need to tell me that!”

He paused, lowering his voice as if recalling something. “…So, her current manager is the same one who used to be the public relations officer?”

Dazai snorted without reply, but his attitude spoke volumes.

Chuya had his answer and quietly resolved to buy a bunch of her CDs to boost her sales.

After all… she was connected to the public relations officer.

Thinking of an old acquaintance, a slight shadow passed through his cobalt-blue eyes.

—

At that moment, Dazai had crept up beside the singer, his single kite-colored eye gleaming with curiosity as he looked at the black cube in her hand—like a cat itching to reach out and paw at something.

“That’s the ability you just saw,” he said.

Clearly, if it weren’t for the restriction of “No Longer Human,” Dazai would have eagerly played with this manifested power.

The thought made him puff up his cheeks in frustration.

“No Longer Human is such a boring ability!”

That fleeting regret aside, the priority now was to find the owner of this power and interrogate them.

With Dazai on the case, it was hardly a challenge—more like drawing a straight line on a blank sheet of paper and traveling from one end to the other.

The man they found was utterly inconspicuous—someone who would blend into any crowd unnoticed. When Chuya dragged him into a deserted corner, the man shrank back with fear, but stopped trembling upon seeing the singer accompanying them.

He looked at her with a near-mad frenzy in his eyes.

“Ah…” he reached out toward her. “Saint…”

A shoe clad in leather ground down hard.

The man lifted his gaze to meet the bandaged youth’s kite-colored eyes, which burned with rolling malice.

“Sir, if you don’t need your eyes, you can donate them to someone who does,” the youth said with a teasing smile, though his expression suggested he was ready to gouge the man’s eyes out at any moment.

“All right, leave this to me for now,” Dazai said.

No one could keep secrets from the Port Mafia’s manipulator. Even without the usual tools of the interrogation room, Dazai’s power was undiminished.

However—this was something the singer must not witness. Dazai signaled to Chuya to take her away.

They could go anywhere; Dazai would have the man talking before a single break bell.

As Dazai watched Chuya and the singer disappear from sight, he looked down at the man beneath his boot and smiled coldly.

“Well then, sir, care to talk?”

“Saint… what does that mean?”

***

Sent away by Dazai, Chuya Nakahara walked side by side with the singer.

His shoulders bore a stiffness invisible to others—for throughout Chuya’s experience, moments of simple companionship without ulterior motives were rare.

Moreover, this wasn’t a comrade from the Sheep, nor an enemy or client from the Port Mafia, but a shining young idol who sparkled like a star.

For the first time, Chuya felt at a loss.

His eyes kept drifting toward her, and his heart brimmed with questions: What’s your relationship with Dazai? How do you get along with the public relations officer’s manager? What exactly was that song you sang, and your ability?

But these questions had to remain unspoken. Unlike Dazai—who was shameless and skilled in language—Chuya couldn’t just bluntly interrogate a stranger.

Perhaps it was knowing this about Chuya that made Dazai confident enough to let him spend time alone with the singer.

What Chuya hadn’t anticipated was that the girl caught his gaze.

She looked at him openly, raising an eyebrow, and straightforwardly laid it all out. “What’s wrong? You’ve been looking at me all this time.”

“Ah, ah.” Caught so plainly, Chuya’s ears flushed a deep crimson, as if blood could drip from them.

“I was just a little curious… I have a friend who used to have the same manager as you.”

“Mr. Ryosuke, right?” If she had any deeper understanding of the entertainment world, she would know that her manager had previously handled only one artist—the famed former international superstar public relations officer.

But she was indifferent to this and missed the chance to learn it, simply assuming Chuya’s glances were because she reminded him of a friend.

As a born idol and singer, accustomed to being watched and admired, she nodded slightly, showing she wasn’t bothered.

Chuya subtly exhaled in relief.

“Is being a star hard? What does it feel like?” he asked abruptly.

This was a question he should have asked the public relations officer long ago, but before he could get the answer, that person was already lost to death because of him.

Now, asking the same question to the singer who shared that manager, Chuya himself struggled to understand his own feelings or motives for seeking an answer.

For a stranger meeting for the first time, the question bordered on intrusive.

Yet because the singer had a favorable impression of Chuya—and he was Dazai’s partner, sharing a manager—the singer answered.

“I love to sing, love the stage. I want more people to hear my voice,” she said. “For me, it’s more than work—it’s a path to fulfill my dreams.”

“I don’t know whose shadow you see in me, but that’s my answer.”