KuniSaki

"Please... don’t let... your ideals... kill you... I... love..."

- Sasaki trying to tell Kunikida she loves him while dying

KuniSaki is the het ship between Doppo Kunikida and Nobuko Sasaki from the Bungou Stray Dogs fandom.

Canon
Following an anonymous tip, Kunikida first meets Sasaki kidnapped and drowning at an abandoned hospital. Some days later, Kunikida and Atsushi visit Sasaki in the hospital. She thanks them for saving her and reveals she stayed last night at Dazai's place, which shocks the two men. At the start of the investigation Kunikida says that he was not jealous of Sasaki staying at Dazai's place, though it is strongly implied that he was. He felt relieved when Dazai clarified that Sasaki stayed in another room away from him, and Kunikida later invited her to stay at his own place for her safety, insisting that he had no ulterior motives whatsoever. He appeared almost vulnerable in Sasaki's midst, with Dazai subtly nudging at Kunikida's apparent attraction towards her.

When the agency learns about the bomb threat, Dazai was with Sasaki in a cafe. Kunikida and Atsushi arrive and they openly discuss the bomb situation. Dazai asks Sasaki for her opinion and she tells them a lot about the Azure King and guessed this was either him or someone related to him. When she revealed she was single because she recently broke with her boyfriend, Dazai tried hooking her up with Kunikida since he was her type. He told her Kunikida's type, but she thought it was too descriptive, and was frightened.

Kunikida described Sasaki to be beautiful and became taken aback upon learning that her ideal type is a man of ideals who would devote himself to everything, much like Kunikida himself. The next day, Kunikida visited the graveyard, where he happened to find Sasaki. Kunikida complimented her y saying she looked "even lovelier in a kimono". She explained that she lied to him about breaking up with her boyfriend, and he had actually died. He tried to comfort her, only to retort with what he deemed as foolish, simple, and stupid words.

As Sasaki left the cemetery, Dazai called Kunikida to the abandoned hospital. He had Rokuzo look into Sasaki's claims, which led him and Kunikida to an abandoned building. When Rokuzo arrives, Kunikida denies the thought of him being Azure Messenger, which Dazai confirms. Before either he or Rokuzo can clarify the situation, Sasaki appears, shooting and killing the boy. Kunikida becomes conflicted by how he feels towards her with her identity revelation as the Azure Apostle. He pleads for her to stop after she shot Rokuzo, but he becomes stumped when she askes him who she should be pointing her weapon at instead.

Sasaki points out that she could never be with an idealist. To her, the idealism the Azure King and Kunikida shared inevitably leads to her and people like her to feel left behind, always put second to ideals that could never truly be reached. Ironically, it's that exact nature that drew her toward Kunikida. Before he can react to her statement, Rokuzo shoots and kills her with the gun Dazai had dropped. she attempts to confess her love to him in her dying moments, showing considerable conflicting emotions with her feelings towards idealists.

Kunikida becomes plagued with the question on why Sasaki had saved him back at the abandoned hospital from the poison gas when she had every chance of finishing him off cleanly. He soon arrived at the conclusion that she simply had no interest in a world where criminals were killed for their crimes but merely wanted to finish her deceased lover's plot.

In the end, Kunikida turned his rage towards Dazai for indirectly killing Sasaki through Rokuzo, only to be refuted by Dazai who warned him not to succumb into his ideals, lest he would be consumed by them like what happened to the Azure King. Sasaki's death greatly impacted Kunikida and his view of his ideals. Although he remains true to them, he is constantly haunted by the deaths of those he cannot save, a weight that remains heavy on his shoulders.

Kunikida greatly regretted Sasaki's death, admitting to recall "a trace of her smile" in his mind. This death would seem to haunt him when Kunikida became affected by Q's curse at least two years later during the three-way conflict. Throughout the curse, Kunikida apparently spouted how he "cherished her life so much because he sought the ideal world".

Fanon
Despite the mutual feelings between the two, KuniSaki is not a very popular ship in the Bungou Stray Dogs fandom, due to Sasaki not having very much screen time, and an early death. Many people in the fandom, not even just shippers, believe the two would have married if Sasaki survived as the real life people that they were based on had gotten married.

KuniSaki is the most popular ship for Sasaki, though on Kunikida’s side it’s rivaled by KunikiDazai and KuniKatai. There are 13 works on ao3 for the pairing.

Fandom
FAN FICTION

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Trivia

 * The real Nobuko Sasaki and Doppo Kunikida, who both characters are based on, were married in real life.
 * They both taught at universities, Kunikida being an algebra instructor at the Shin-Tsuruya Institute, while Sasaki was a lecturer at a university in Tokyo.
 * They both have green eyes.
 * Kunikida's birthday, August 30th and Sasaki's birthday, July 20th, are 41 days away from each other.