Chapter Text
Atsushi sat up from his nightmare...
And promptly smacks his head on the shelf above him.
Ugh. That's what he gets for choosing to sleep in the closet.
Hoping he hadn't woken Kyouka up with all of his noise, Atsushi strains his ears to listen for any signs of movement from the room next to him.
...
Thankfully, all Atsushi could hear was her slow breathing. His sister is still asleep.
Wanting to check the time, he fumbles for the Armed Detective Agency (ADA) issued flip phone he was given, ending up getting tangled in the damn charging cable. Due to the original cord not being long enough to reach from the plug to the closet, he had to plug his charger into an extension cord.
Eventually his hand hit the cold, metal casing on the phone and he opened it. Squinting at the brightness, he tried to make out the time-
You have got to be kidding. He did not just wake up at three in the morning.
That explains the exhaustion, then.
Atsushi desperately needs to get back to sleep, especially since he hasn't been sleeping well recently due to the repeating nightmares.
He has work in the morning, goddammit. With how Atsushi's time in the ADA has been, he needs all the rest he can get.
Unfortunately, after unlocking his memories a few weeks prior, all of Atsushi's previous nightmares of the orphanage had been replaced with his regained memories of Shibusawa.
Never in his life did Atsushi think he'd be saying this, but he would like his old nightmares back, please and thank you. Sure, the other ones were...bad, but these are so, so much worse. And they don't seem like they're going to stop any time soon, either.
For now, Atsushi has decided to just deal with it, and tries to go back to sleep.
The keyword here being, "tries."
He lays there, staring at that damned skull cracking shelf, for the next four hours until eventually, his alarm went off to wake him up for work.
Slowly creeping out of his closet (lmao gay), he quietly crawls over to where Kyouka is fast asleep.
"Hey Kyouka-chan," he whispers, making sure he won't be startling her awake. "Good morning. It's time to get up."
Her eyes snap open.
"Good morning, Atsushi-san."
"Time to get ready for work, alright?" Atsushi says quietly, attempting to seem cheerful, instead of exhausted, for his self-proclaimed younger sister. However, due to the look on said sister's face, his attempt at hiding his tiredness may have fallen a bit flat.
"Are you feeling okay?" Kyouka asks, worried.
"Of course I am! Hey, don't look at me like that. I am, really. Thank you for asking, though." Atsushi puts on his best smile and heightens the cheer in his voice.
His sister still looks skeptical at his answer.
"Now, let's get dressed, eat, and leave so that we aren't late for work, okay? We ALL know how being late makes Kunikida-san feel..." Atsushi says, quickly trying to change the subject.
Kyouka studies him for a moment longer.
"Okay. I will go get dressed." She really doesn't want to be screamed at this morning.
Every single member of the Armed Detective Agency was worried about Atsushi.
The boy has been spacing out, more jumpy than usual, and more irritable, even snapping at Dazai.
("The look on Dazai's face had been absolutely priceless." - Ranpo, Yosano, and privately, Kunikida.)
Although, with that last one, it's not like Dazai hadn't had that coming. In Atsushi's defence, Dazai had been way more annoying than usual that day. And if it was a normal day, Atsushi would have just gone along with his antics, or ignored him. But it hadn't been a normal day. Finally fed up with Dazai's bullshit, Atsushi yelled at him.
"How about you stop leaving me by myself on missions to go try and kill yourself, huh Dazai?!"
Atsushi almost never snaps at anyone. Unless, of course, that person is Akutagawa. If it IS Akutagawa, then all empathy just flies out the window.
Atsushi has also been coming to work with circles under his eyes so incredibly dark that Ranpo is reminded of Poe's raccoon, Karl.
Being a renowned detective agency, one would think that something like this wouldn't be too much of a problem, as they should have been able to have figured out the issue and fixed it by now. And yes, that is...usually the case with these sorts of things. Unfortunately, that's part of why the ADA members are so worried, currently.
None of them could figure out the cause of Atsushi's issues.
Sure, they know some of it, like the physical stuff. They know that he wasn't getting enough sleep. They could figure out that it was probably nightmares that are making him so tired. (This being confirmed later on by Kyouka-chan telling them about the whimpers and whispers of, "Please, no!" she hears from the closet at night). They could even guess that all of this had something to do with the fight with Shibusawa, as the boy hadn't been the same since then. But they could not puzzle out what exactly was haunting him.
HOW does he know Shibusawa? WHY is he having nightmares connected to the guy? Did he know him before his time at the Agency?
While they'd like to think they know all there is to know about him, if they're being perfectly honest with themselves...they barely know him. They know almost nothing of his past, just that it was bad enough to do serious damage to his self-esteem and self-image and that he lived in an orphanage until he was kicked out at eighteen.
Nakajima Atsushi worries them, and the Armed Detective Agency, his family, have no clue how to help him.