#but that's a silly exercise since either party failing to uphold their end will simply Die Instead

[kaurwreck]

Atsushi is implicitly agreeing to undergo the parallel lesson, though. He doesn't tell Akutagawa he'll allow Akutagawa to kill him in six months. He offers him a fight through which Akutagawa should be able to recontextualize the relationship between strength and weakness. Atsushi, meanwhile, commits himself to shedding the ties that bind him and to work with Kunikida to mirror what he's asked of Akutagawa.

Even if Atsushi didn't tell Akutagawa how he would go about training with Kunikida, Akutagawa understands the wager in the context in which it's offered, which is after their learning the others' critical failures of ego through the fight against Ivan. Atsushi cannot, as he is, provide Akutagawa what he's promised; if he weren't committing himself to the same ego death he's asking of Akutagawa, the promise would be meaningless.

Akutagawa trusts that it's not; he has no reason not to trust Atsushi's conviction, based on what he knows about Atsushi and Dazai's faith in Atsushi.

And then we quite literally see him doing the thing he implicitly committed to doing when he made the deal with Akutagawa. Kunikida even lays out the imbalance that Atsushi has to overcome for us, in complete parallel to Akutagawa's overreliance on hyperviolence.

Atsushi knows what the relationship between strength and weakness should be, but he can't access it in himself yet. That is what he offers Akutagawa: that he'll figure it out in himself in time to realize it in Akutagawa.

The terms of the six month deal are so funny to me because only Akutagawa agreed to give up something. He’s gone on a whole arc about learning the lesson Atsushi wanted to teach him.

Atsushi hasn’t done shit.

He went oh you wanna kill me? Fine but you’re gonna have to work for it. And that’s it, Akutagawa has to fundamentally change who he is and Atsushi just has to survive for the next six months.

And honestly respect for Atsushi. He said I don’t have to give up shit this is all on you. And Akutagawa didn’t object to it at all.