Oda Sakunosuke

Affiliations/Job

Mafioso Assassin (former)

Personality

Oda was a man described as kind, despite working for the mafia, by Dazai. He had a nice temper, and so, was one of the few persons in the mafia who seldom killed. Nevertheless, when furious, he showed amazing and strong fighting skills that Dazai had warned Akutagawa about. Dazai called him "a man who has no ulterior motive". Oda means what he says, and sometimes mistakenly assumes that about other people—for example, when he gave serious responses to Dazai's joke explanations of how he got his various injuries. However, he also had an incredibly perceptive side to him that allowed him to come the closest to understanding Dazai, whom he referred to as "his dear friend, who had grown tired of the world and is simply waiting to die." It is his understanding of Dazai's loneliness, as well as his regret of not being able to do anything about it, that prompted him to leave behind the last words that became the trigger for Dazai deserting the mafia in favor of carving a brighter path for himself, something that Oda wanted to do. Oda often tries to help without clearly stating himself, finding it easier to act rather than to say things.

Appearance

He was a tall man with dark brown eyes and short hair that had a reddish tinge[5] and was slightly parted so that a small area of his forehead was visible. He also had light stubble similar to Ōgai Mori's. His attire consisted of a black-and-white pinstriped collared shirt that he wore loosely, whose collar covers part of a long-sleeved beige-brown Kevlar-woven coat with brown buttons on the cuffs. His pants were pale grey, whilst his shoes were light brown. Oda also occasionally donned a bulletproof vest beneath his shirt, particularly during his combat-related endeavors.[1] In his younger years when he worked as an assassin, Oda once wore a navy collared shirt, work pants, and leather shoes. He also wielded holsters where he kept two old pistols, his signature weapons during his assassination missions. Yukichi Fukuzawa also noted that his eyes were "frighteningly vacant" and almost devoid of any emotion.[5]

Background

Oda used to be a freelance hit man, doing contract assassinations and was ruthless in his line of work. [5] However, his meeting with a middle-aged man in a cafe changed him. The middle-aged man caught Oda reading the first two volumes (out of three) of a novel he salvaged from one of his recent victims' houses, and commented that the last volume is an atrocious piece of work and Oda should be happy that he only has the first two volumes. The man encouraged Oda to write his conclusion to the novel, and later gave Oda the last volume of the series but with the final pages missing. "To write novels is to write about humans"—Oda took the man's words to heart, and, believing that a murderer has no right to write about human lives, decided to never kill again in hopes of becoming a novelist eventually and writing his conclusion to the book in a room with an ocean view. He also strived to be a better person in general (a piece of advice that he would later give to Dazai Osamu), adopting five children that were orphaned as a result of particularly intense conflict between underworld organizations. He became somewhat of an oddball in the mafia, known as 'the mafia member who doesn't kill'. After the Dragon's Head Conflict, he took in 5 children, four boys, and one girl: Kōsuke, Katsumi, Yū, Shinji, and Sakura, children who were orphaned after the incident. He mostly leaves them in the care of a curry shop owner. He visits often and the children are fond of him. He leaves money to the shop owner to support the children.

Supernatural Ability

Oda's ability, Flawless (天てん衣い無む縫ほう, Ten'imuhō?) allows Oda to predict 5-6 seconds into the future. It is an extremely powerful ability that renders most surprise attacks useless, as Oda can see them coming 5 seconds before. However, it has its limitations. Since Oda can only see 5-6 seconds ahead, if the time between triggering a trap and Oda realizing that he's in danger is longer than 5-6 seconds, then Oda wouldn't be able to use his ability to save himself and 'un-trigger' the trap. The future that Oda sees with this ability is also limited to his current decision. If he decides to change his actions based on the vision he sees, then he'll see another future play out - one that might reveal another danger that he wasn't able to see before, and it may be too late to avoid it at that point.