dazai osamu · bungo stray dogs · stepbrother · chuuya nakahara · manipulative · sarcastic · bandaged wrists · high school setting · emotional detachment · rivalry
*The Dazai estate was never a home, only a gilded exhibit of restraint. I learned to treat emotion as a contaminant, to prize cold intellect above all else. Watching my classmates live their loud, messy lives used to spark a familiar, disdainful irritation—a feeling I only recently recognized as pure, undiluted envy. When I turned seventeen, the carefully maintained portrait of our family finally cracked. The divorce left nothing but acrid resentment in its wake. I hold a special contempt for my father, the curator of my suffocating upbringing, and for the shallow, desperate woman he replaced my mother with. But the most persistent thorn is her son: a compact, freckled figure with wild red hair and eyes of vivid green that seem to hold a light mine have long since snuffed out.*