Gakuen Bungou Stray Dogs - The First Half (Part 1/?)

Gakuen Bungou Stray Dogs - The First Half (Part 1/?)

Links to other parts: Part 2

I decided to do a translation of the au novel that was included as a bonus in the DVD/BD of the anime. The novel is called Gakuen Bungou Stray Dogs (Bungou Stray Dogs School) and is consisted of 2 parts, the first half is included in DVD/BD Vol 2 and the second half is in Vol 8. It is about 80 pages in total. It has also been adapted into a story in the game Bungou Stray Dogs: Tales of the Lost so you may find the story familiar.

Below is some of the notes I would like to read before proceeding.

- Please buy the DVD/BD to support the authors if you can.

- I don't mind if you use bits of it for analysis or credits, but do not repost the whole thing out of Tumblr.

- Feel free to retranslate it if you want, but keep in mind that my translation is not perfect as I am not fluent in neither English nor Japanese.

- I am translating casually at my pace so I can't promise when the next part will come out. But I will make time for it when I can.

That's it. Happy reading!

The season of dancing cherry blossoms.

A boy is running along the road to his school.

The boy’s name is Nakajima Atsushi. An ordinary high school student who came to this school with his great ambitions, and with nothing special except for his noticeable white hair.

It is seven in the morning.

He is running down the sloppy way leading to the school, out of breath.

He is going to be late.

It was a bad idea to take a shortcut by a different route than usual just because he overslept a little. To make matter worse, he just started living in this Yokohama this month and it is still a strange land to him. Sometimes, he still forgets the route to school that he just managed to remember one week ago, yet he decided to go straight for a steep bank thinking it would be a shortcut. That was his first mistake. Where is this place? He has no idea.

Atsushi deeply regrets it. At this rate, his brand-new uniform will be stained with mud from the bank. He has to make it in time for homeroom at any cost.

That thought makes Atsushi a little restless. Using the school spire that can be seen from anywhere in the area as a landmark, he continues to run forward blindly. That is the second mistake. He could have just asked someone how to get to the main gate of the school, instead of running a straight line towards such a landmark like a spire. That is because for Atsushi, it is somewhat embarrassing to ask others for directions.

Eventually, Atsushi arrives at the school.

He has arrived but he cannot get in. Because the place he arrives at is the back of the school.

In response to the recent increase in security awareness, the back of the school is now surrounded by a high steel fence. This must be behind the gym, Atsushi takes a guess. It is a long way to the back gate, even farther to the front gate. This is bad, Atsushi finally realizes. The clock on the spire that he can barely see from here tells him that the class is about to start.

There is no choice but to climb up. Atsushi decides.

That is his third mistake.

Atsushi grabs his fingers through the gaps of the black iron fence, and climbs up like a gecko, while making sure not to tear his uniform.

Atsushi has no great strength nor outstanding talent, but he is super strong physically for some reasons. Just like a wild animal, he easily climbs over the fence and lands on the school ground. He makes a weird sound upon landing but fortunately for him, as he looks around, no one seems to have heard it.

It is April now. The rows of cherry trees in the campus are literally singing the spring songs of the world. The flower petals are dancing just like in a movie set. Atsushi runs to the school building.

Then he passes by a huge cherry tree.

It is a magnificent tree. Its overhanging branches are three times the length of those of the other trees. The flower petals tremble in the refreshing morning breeze of spring.

This is where he makes his forth, also his biggest mistake.

He stops there.

Because an unbelievable thing catches his eyes.

From the tree whose outline are highlighted even more by the backlight, something is hanging down.

Or, more precisely, “someone”.

Ah, this is something I should not see. Atsushi thinks reflexively.

The thing which is hanging down from the giant tree by something like a rope, no matter how he looks at it, is not a big bagworm. It is too big for that. It is swaying in the wind and squeaking like a heavy pendulum.

He should have ignored it and walked away but Atsushi reflexively stands still.

And thanks to that, he is able to observe that “someone” more closely.

That is a tall person. Messy hair. From the fluttering uniform, he seems to be a student of this school too. The rope is completely hooked around his neck.

Atsushi’s heart is thumping so hard it hurts. Cold sweats are gathering on his chin.

I have to call the teachers. No, I have to report it first. No, ambulance first!

Atsushi takes out the cellphone that he just learnt to use recently and tries to make a call with his confused brain and his trembling fingers. Wha.. What should I do? Wait a minute, what number is 119?

At that moment, the body starts speaking.

“Woaaaaahhhh…. I slept so well.”

He says so as he swiftly unties the rope and drops himself straight to the ground.

“Gyahhh!!!” Atsushi unconsciously lets out a strange voice in shock.

The tall person tosses away the rope that was tied around his neck, stretches his back, cracks his neck and suddenly strikes a pose by himself. That’s when he notices Atsushi.

“Hey you over there.” The person says, “Yes, you. I’m talking to you.”

Atsushi nervously looks around, praying that the guy is calling to someone rather than himself. However, there is no one but him here.

“You. Put your phone away.”

Atsushi looks at his hand. The phone he was trying to use, is now dialing.

“Huh? Eh? Ah?”

“I told you. Could you please turn it off? I’ve had this a lot. This kind of misunderstanding.”

“M…misunderstanding?”

“What were you trying to do?”

Atsushi is pathetically honest. When he is asked, he answers honestly. “What? … I was trying to call an ambulance…”

“Where is that person who looks like he needs an ambulance here?”

Atsushi finally gets it.

The young man in front of him acts as if nothing has happened. Even though no matter how you look at it, he clearly was putting a rope around the cherry tree to try do… “that”. Even though the red traces of the rough rope are still there on his neck.

What the hell is this? What does this even mean?

“It’s a pain, you know. People like you who made hasty judgements and misread the situation. There are bad days when I was offered flowers and steamed bun under my feet.”

“Eh?“

“I just ate the buns.”

“No, no, not that.” Atsushi waves his hands exaggeratedly. “You said it was a misunderstanding… so that means you were not ha…hanging yourself?”

“I was hanging myself.”

“What?”

“Hanging for health.”

Ahhh… So that’s why…

Atsushi is almost convinced for one second, before he jumps up and says, “There is no such thing!”

“If you don’t know, I will tell you. I have been obsessed with suicide ever since I was a kid. Drowning, jumping, electrocuting. I have tried all kinds of suicide methods, that my body ended up developing a tolerance to suicide. Just a slight and little lethal dose won’t be able to kill me anymore. It can’t be helped so I have no choice but to hang on the trees in the campus every day to sleep. It is super convenient because I don’t have to go to and from school. It is also easier to fall asleep. In addition, it has so many benefits, such as stretching your spine, improving blood circulation, removing toxins, and activating the immune system. You should definitely give it a try.”

“I won’t.”

“People say it a lot, you know: If it is for your health, it is okay to die.”

“No one says that!”

Atsushi is confused to no end. This person looks completely fine. But he doesn’t understand anything other than that. He has an idea that the other was telling him that everything was okay because it was not a suicide and also explained the reason to him, but the explanation part just slips right off the surface of his brain, leaving him totally clueless in the end.

At that moment, the first bell rings, indicating that classes are going to start. Atsushi comes back to his sense.

“Nooo! I’m late!”

He jumps up, remembering the situation he is in. “I’m late for class!”

“What? You are getting all worked up about such a thing?”

“Such a thing” is quite a way to put it, Atsushi thinks to himself. Judging from the uniform, this guy must be a student of this school, too. If so, shouldn’t he be just as rushed as Atsushi when the bell rings? As he gives the young man in the uniform that look, the other smiles suggestively.

“It makes sense if you are late for half a day. But this much? There is no need to rush. Okay then, this is not my paying back for causing you troubles, but I will teach you my method to prevent being late.”

“Huh?”

Method to prevent being late? A question mark pops up above Atsushi’s head.

There is no preventive measure for people who are about to be late at this very moment. The first bell just now was to mark two minutes before the start of class. Even if he runs from here, he will not be able to make it in two minutes. This is not something that can be solved with a little preparation or tricks.

“What is your name?”

The young man points at him, so honest Atsushi answers honestly.

“Nakajima… Atsushi.”

“Come with me, Atsushi-kun. My name is Dazai Osamu.”

Dazai Osamu. Atsushi repeats the name in his head.

“You look like a new student, right? Then let’s go, to our school.” The young man named Dazai chuckles as he says that.

“Let me tell you about the many strange and bizarre people of this school, and suicide enthusiast is not even one of them.”

Somehow Atsushi feels as if he has been fooled by a fox.

He will eventually understand.

That “the many strange and bizarre people of this school” is neither a metaphor nor an exaggeration, it is literally what it sounds.

***

A scary thing has happened.

Things went exactly as Dazai said.

Atsushi entered the class a whole 30 minutes late, yet he received no scolding nor punishment. He smoothly went in like the air, and after exchanging a word or two with the teacher, he was assigned to his seat with no problem.

Atsushi looks at the piece of paper in his hand as if he is daydreaming.

A tardy slip.

That is what Dazai gave Atsushi.

The document clearly states that his late arrival is reasonable, with the signature of the teacher giving permission. It has today’s date and Atsushi’s name, too. It is a genuine certificate, no matter how you look at it. As long as Atsushi has this, his late arrival will be treated as fair.

This must be magic.

How in the world could Dazai prepare this kind of document?

The mere sight of someone hanging themselves first thing in the morning is quite enough for a traumatic event that can scar the witness for the rest of his life. But to see the hanging person come out completely fine and cast some kind of magic to turn his late arrival into nothing? No one would believe that. Who in the world is that student Dazai? Is he even real?

In the mean time, the morning class passes by in a flash.

The boy sitting next to Atsushi in class was sleeping the whole time. He is a classmate called Miyazawa Kenji. He was sleeping with an extremely peaceful face and showed no sign of waking up even during recess. He looked so relaxed. Is he okay? Why is no one waking him up? Atsushi felt a little restless but Kenji finally woke up just before noon as his stomach started to growl. And after that he was taking classes so normally and happily. It seems that he didn’t sleep in class because he is a delinquent or a rebel. He just slept because he was sleepy.

How wonderful it would to be if I could live like that, Atsushi thinks.

Just like that, the morning passes and the bell rings for the lunch break. While everyone starts leaving their seats one by one to go for lunch, all of a sudden, the math teacher who has been teaching the class until just now approaches Atsushi and says.

“Nakajima Atsushi. Come to the staff room. I have something to talk to you.”

For someone who sees himself as an ordinary and timid high school student like Atsushi, being summoned to the staff room must be the biggest incident of the century. He may look like this, but he is just a shy boy who has been keeping his head low and walking as quietly as possible just so as not to cause troubles or be noticed by the teachers or the delinquents, even since he attended this school one week ago. Now that he is being called to the staff room by himself and having absolutely no hint why he was being summoned, he cannot keep his calm at all. Atsushi’s temperature drops steadily. His arms and legs are shivering, and the long tuft of hair on his right ears is shaking with fear.

“Excuse me.”

Everyone in the staff room looks at Atsushi as he makes a 90-degree bow and enters the room. That alone is enough to make him break out in cold sweat.

Atsushi tries to stand firm on his shaking legs and walks toward the math teacher that called out to him a while ago.

“What can I do for you, Kunikida-sensei?”

As Atsushi says so, the teacher, who is sipping Japanese tea, glares up at him.

“What can you do for me?”

The math teacher called Kunikida looked at Atsushi with the sharp eyes behind his glasses. That is the gaze of Kunikida-sensei, known as one of the most terrifying looks among the teachers’ in this school. Female students who try to start a normal conversation with him end up crying sometimes. His rectangle glasses do not help with softening the atmosphere at all.

“Nakajima Atsushi, right?” Kunikida-sensei speaks slowly as he sits on his chair. “What is your relationship with Dazai?”

“… Eh?”

The question comes from such an unexpected direction that Atsushi, who was just called to the staff room and met with such scary eyes that he was thinking of crying, can’t get it for a moment.

“I said Dazai. Don’t tell me you have forgotten. Didn’t you get this tardy slip from him today?”

Now he remembers. About the magic tardy slip that has saved him from being late today, and the authorization signature of the teacher in charge. It is no doubt Kunikida-sensei in front of him, whose name is written there. In other words, Dazai has had this Kunikida-sensei write that tardy slip?

Come to think of it, he is pretty sure that Dazai said he was going to get a tardy slip for himself too, which means this Kunikida-sensei has issued the tardy slips for both Dazai and Atsushi.

Tardy slips can be issued only for unavoidable reasons, such as sudden illnesses, events, or family issues. There are no justifiable reasons for Atsushi, who was late because he arrived at the back door and had to climb up the fence, or Dazai, who was just hanging himself on the cherry tree. In other words, this Kunikida-sensei has issued a justifiable tardy slip for Atsushi’s unjustifiable late arrival.

For what?

He doesn’t know.

Atsushi thinks about it, but he can’t understand, so he expresses his gratefulness without thinking much. “Thank you for issuing the tardy slip for me.”

“Thanking me for what?” Kunikida pounds the table. Atsushi jumps up.

“Are you one of his kind, brat? He is a demon who always pulls out my weaknesses from absolutely groundless sources and threatens me for tardy slips. Every time he appears out of nowhere, he shatters my plans and my ideals into pieces before disappearing again. The other day, he appeared right before my payday and somehow found out how much I was paid and even used a mistake I made on the night of the teachers’ year end party to threaten me and…”

Kunida suddenly stops as he notices the looks and whispering from the surrounding.

Then he stays still for a moment as if his battery has run out, before letting out a big cough.

“Anyway.”

“Yes?”

I want to hear a bit more of that story, Atsushi thinks.

“His… Dazai’s personal conduct is an eyesore to me. But he always has his escape route prepared and manages to get away cunningly. On top of it, he has a position in this school, so even teachers cannot expel him as we wish.

“Position?”

“This.”

Kunikida says as he holds out a piece of paper.

That paper, printed in an official layout, shows the activities records as well as incomes and expenditures report of a certain organization.

“Student Council…”

“I am the advisor there.”

Atsushi stares at the name of that Student Council.

What a strange name for a student council. That’s what he thinks.

The paper has the names of the Student Council members written on it. And Dazai is one of them.

“I have been thinking about this for a long time. I need a bell on Dazai’s neck.”

“A bell?”

“A bell that rings when he moves. His methods are deeply-rooted and unbelievably ingenious that there is nothing I can do to punish him. For the time being, I will put you under his wing, brat. Report to me when he tries to do anything.”

Atsushi makes a face showing he is troubled and wants to refuse. Kunikida who sensibly observes that tells him that he will cancel today’s tardy slip if he refuses. Atsushi therefore has no way to retreat.

Still, Atsushi thinks to himself.

A group with that Dazai as a member, and with a name that smells danger on top of that. This student council might not be an ordinary organization at all.

The innate animal instinct sends a chill through his back, making him shiver. It is the right intuition.

Atsushi then takes another glance at the name of the student council written on the paper.

“Armed Student Council”.

***

<To be continued>