The Velvet Requiem

Hidden in the alleys of Montmartre, where the cobblestones remember revolution and romance, The Velvet Requiem is whispered about in passing, in prayer, and in dreams. It’s not a place you find—it finds you. When your pulse stops but your soul stirs, when regret clings to you tighter than skin, it opens its doors.

Tonight, like every night, the velvet curtains breathed in rhythm with jazz.

Dazai Osamu sat in the booth farthest from the stage, shadowed and silent, with his long coat slung over his shoulders like fallen angel’s wings. His glass of absinthe was untouched, its pale green hue casting strange ghosts on the polished table.

He was dead but not gone.

The dead don’t stay dead at The Velvet Requiem, not when their stories are unfinished.

He leaned back, eyes closed, half listening to the band warm up. And then, the stage lit gold. He opened his eyes.

In a suit and a hat tipped low, stood Chuuya Nakahara.

Not a singer tonight—the singer.

He stepped into the light like it owed him something. And when he sang, the whole room tilted like iron to magnet.

The first note hit like memory. His voice was a low-throated lament, velvet and ruin, sliding down every spine and soaking every thought in longing. Dazai couldn’t look away.

He recognized him. He always did.

Every soul remembered who made them feel alive, even in death.

When the song ended, the room exhaled.

He found Chuuya later in the side lounge in a haze of red lamps and lonely melodies.

“Still haunting the place?” Dazai asked, leaning in with a lazy, melancholic charm he

wore like a second skin.

Chuuya sipped his wine dark as blood and twice as dangerous. “Still pretending you don’t belong here?”

“I don’t,” Dazai said. “I’m only here until I forget what I died for.” Chuuya turned, eyes glowing under the dim light. “And have you?”

“Not tonight.”

They sat in silence, the kind that tastes like grief and unspoken desire.

Chuuya’s voice cut through it. “You ever think maybe this place isn’t purgatory? Maybe it’s… salvation.”

“I don’t believe in salvation,” Dazai said. “Only detours.”

Chuuya smiled—sharp, tragic, unshaken. “Then let this be a beautiful one.”

His hand touched Dazai’s across the table. The contact was soft. Real. Too real. And suddenly Dazai felt there again. Not quite dead. Not quite whole. But feeling.

“I remember you,” Dazai whispered, as if the words could bring back the heartbeat he lost. “I remember how you sang in the rain the night the world ended.”

Chuuya tilted his head. “That night… I think I was singing for you.”

They didn’t leave together, not exactly. The Velvet Requiem doesn’t allow endings—it only offers interludes.

But as Dazai followed Chuuya through the hall of mirrors, past dancing phantoms and

tearful saints, he realized he didn’t want to move on yet.

Some songs are too beautiful to end.

And some souls… are too entangled to part.