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“…Where does she go every night?”“Huh?”His lips thin, pursed in thought and a touch of annoyance. Admittedly, he was a little out of his comfort level in this. He did not know if this was a topic even appropriate to breech, but the consistency…The consistency of the occurrence unnerved him.So, he straightens in his seat, half-turning to face Kaito where they both sit on the couch watching some newly released action movie up until two minutes ago when Maki glanced at the clock, stood up, and left without so much as a goodbye.Usually, he would think this is classic Maki: a woman of few words and always seemingly having something to do, keeping busy more than ever since the game. Furthermore, this was Maki and Kaito; their business was their business. Everyone had their vices, activities meant to keep them productive so that their mind—Anyway. What he means is that he would not blink an eye at a situation like this.The problem lies in the mystery.“Maki,” Shuichi clarifies tentatively. “Why does she leave every night at seven?”“Oh, uh…” Kaito, who initially had completely turned his body to focus on his friend, stiffly faces forward, lifting his hand behind his head and scratching at it in a telltale gesture of discomfort. Shuichi hates to admit it, but his reaction itches the detective written inside of him. “I don’t really know.” Kaito shrugs.Shuichi blanches. “You don’t?” How could he not..?“I mean, I asked her about it,” Kaito defends, and his voice rises, causing Shuichi to tense in an instinctual reaction of defense. “But she asked me to trust her and I do.”Well. Some habits never left them. He should have expected that from Kaito.He gets it, he does. He trusts Maki, too, and if Shuichi were written into any other Ultimate, maybe he would let that rest there—but he wasn’t, and he can’t. See, the mystery is one thing; the routine-like absence every evening on the dot is pushing the limit of his blissful ignorance, so to speak. It is on the epicenter of suspicious behavior and toying the line of potential treachery.Of course, that is how his imagination likes to spin the story building in his head.He hates his mind some days.Even after the game, his natural inclination to doubt has never left his philosophy. It has helped in some cases, of fake fans with devious intentions, and ruined others, with past contestants being unable to reconcile with him due to his suspicions blocking the way of their relationship.In all honesty, Shuichi should count himself lucky to have a friend like Kaito who constantly works to recognize his own faults on the spot and become better as needed, keen for communication and a heart full of forgiveness.He is also lucky to have Maki, who acts as a quiet solitude on days Shuichi cannot bear to speak out loud.This is why Shuichi waited to bring it up, and this is why he refused to question it the first three times.But for Kaito to not know…“You’ve never tried to find out?” He can’t help but ask. “How long has this been going on?”“Hey, hey.” Hands invade Shuichi’s vision as Kaito works on mitigation, visibly attempting to reign in the conversation by waving his hands in Shuichi’s face. “Calm down there, detective. I figured she needs her ‘me’ time, like I did, you know? Sometimes we all need to be alone.”He bristles before he can help himself, finding offense in the small way Kaito recognizes the battle within the former Ultimate Detective, but he snaps like puppet strings, slumping down just as quickly as he puffs up in affront.He is needling too much, isn’t he? Can pull the detective out of the simulation but not the detective from the contestant.Tsumugi might as well own the copyright to his very being.Eyes lowering onto the couch cushion in shame, he apologizes, “Ah, sorry, Kaito. I’m doing it again.”“No biggie,” Kaito replies, but a quick glance at his face shows a pinched expression.
“Curious, right? She’ll tell us in her own time.”“Of course. Yeah, of course.”The sounds of the TV are not enough to drown out the screams of his spiraling thoughts. He calls it an early night that evening, and Kaito sees him out regardless of the lingering tension between them.Kaito is a good friend. He can’t say the same for himself, apparently. To his credit, Shuichi doesn’t bring it up again.Evidently, he doesn’t need to.It’s scary, how clockwork Maki is when it comes to leaving each evening; in the middle of their movie last time, during dinner, on the streak of winning a game—she checks the clock, frowns, and then excuses herself. Kaito, for all of his words of trust and patience, starts to become suspicious, the corner of his lips downturning each time she leaves.On the dot, at seven on a chilly evening in the middle of a home-cooked soup for dinner, Maki checks the watch on her wrist, her neutral expression twisting into a frown, and she stands up.“Where are you going, Maki?”Shuichi whips his head up, eyes widening at the picture before him: Maki, barely having left her seat, staring equally wide-eyed at Kaito, who is intently watching her.While he is curious, and he wants to know what Maki does with her time, he finds the picture disheartening in an eerily familiar sense. The demeanor of his friends is something that flags a memory of his past, his fake past, of divorced parents and a feeling of neglect that he could not fully devour until his late teenage stages.He had always been the good student, quiet kid. He did not question authority or those that held power over him, but he did theorize.When someone crossed him, his natural inclination leaned towards the avoidance of confrontation, but it did not stop his mind from piecing together why he was crossed in the first place.So, he never questioned his parents separating or why his friends’ parents all lived together, but he did observe evidence that supported their decision to live apart.But Maki and Kaito? The evidence that Shuichi found solely supported their relationship, for the benefit of them both.Shuichi lowers his utensil over his plate, and when it clatters against the ceramic base, he finally notices his own shaky fingers.It seems to snap Maki back into the present, similarly frozen from Kaito’s questioning. Perhaps she had gotten too used to Kaito letting her go and return without so much as a blink of the eye that the question now takes her off her game, and it equally unsettles her as Shuichi, but for a far different reason.Unlike Shuichi, who would probably overexplain himself to diffuse a tense situation, Maki clams up.“Out,” is all she says.“You’ve been going ‘out’ for months now,” Kaito argues. There is a rough quality to his voice that edges on the boarder of something—Shuichi can’t put a finger on it. “Without telling me where. Without telling me why.” He lists it off, bringing a hand up and putting a finger down with it to emphasize this to Maki. “You leave at seven every time. You don’t take a bag with you, and you don’t come back at a certain time. You’ve been back at five in the morning once! If you at least came back consistently, an hour or a couple hours later, that’d at least tell me you’re just doing some kind of night class for something.”Shuichi sinks down into his seat. Slouching, be damned; he is not supposed to be here for this conversation, though his ears are peeled and his eyes are unmoving from Maki, attempting to gauge her thoughts on this.She is hard to read, but he gets the sense of a feeling of waiting. Like she expects something.“You’re seeing someone.”Shuichi’s mouth drops.Because he was watching Maki up until that point, he sees her look of solemn understanding flit across her face, and it clicks as this was what she expected.He switches his gaze over to Kaito, and his expression of tired anger brings him further back into his fake memories of a dad that stopped trying and a mom that screamed at him to love her.He wants to close his eyes, but the part of him that he wished died in the game keeps them pinned open to watch and wait—to see it through. After all, Maki’s answer was at the climax of this conversation, and it would reveal how the ending would go.“Look,” Kaito breaks the silence with a cold tone, “I get that sometimes you need your privacy and your space, but I need to know. I deserve to know.” The soft break in his speech tears at Shuichi’s heart, and he sees Maki similarly break, opening her mouth to speak before getting cut off as Kaito powers on. “This has gone on long enough, and if you were ever to not return one night, I wouldn’t even know where to look. That’s unacceptable for a guy like me.”It shatters the glass ceiling as Maki’s shoulders drop from their tense state, and the look in her eye is novel to Shuichi’s entire experience with relationships.It is baffling—Kaito’s suspicions, understandably, fall to cheating from what Shuichi gathers about Maki’s odd times to leave and return, but his uttermost concern lies in not knowing where Maki is, because if something happened to her, he couldn’t tell the authorities anything about where she was.That’s how Shuichi knows. That is how he knows Maki and Kaito could make it as a couple—because he has never witnessed such a look come from either of his parents.“I’ll show you.”Wait.“…What?”In a humorous moment of brotherly bonding, Shuichi and Kaito look to each other for support, reminding Shuichi of the age-old Do you have any idea what the hell she’s talking about? memories where Maki would give them the least possible information about a situation and Kaito and Shuichi would be left to just ‘figure it out,’ as she’d often tell them.Of course, Kaito was not aware of the equal amount of times that Shuichi shared a look with Maki that went along the lines of Is he seriously doing—yep, he’s doing it.“You too, Shuichi.”“Huh?”Maki nods. “I can see you’re curious.” Then, somberly, she says, “It’s about time you see this.”Not another word is said as they grab their jackets and follow Maki out to the car. “Look, I wanna trust you, Maki, I really do, but if you’ve gotten into drugs—““It’s not drugs,” Maki cuts Kaito off, barely restrained annoyance visceral in her tone, but under her breath she whispers, “not for me, anyway.”That ominous note shuts Kaito up promptly. In the backseat, Shuichi sighs, pressing his head against the cool glass of the window. The sinking feeling in his stomach continues to grow into a pit. Since the moment Maki alluded to his necessary presence in this journey, he cannot help but be on edge, likely as much as Kaito was, stiff in his seat and staring ahead for the duration of the ride. Usually, he was all over the place in the car, whether he was the one driving or not, even fully turning around to speak to Shuichi in the backseat at times. Maki has taken over most driving as a result.As sensical as those actions are, tonight she has not done one thing to alleviate their fears. In fact, she’s exacerbated them.It’s resulted in a jumpy Kaito, sporadically chewing on his thumb and making Maki scold him for it, shooting random questions out and receiving vague answers, and now he has his eyes stuck on the same sight that draws Shuichi’s attention, one they pulled up to mere minutes ago, dreading the thought that this is where Maki was going to take them.Silently pleading in his head that they were not going to enter it and that Maki was instead taking them to a park down the road, Shuichi can’t help but flicker his eyes back and forth between the dingy house they pulled up to and Maki’s actions as she parks the car and goes to open her door, only to be stopped by Kaito’s voices.That leads them to the present, her quiet and extremely vague answer setting them both off.“Maki, this doesn’t seem—““You can’t be serious that’s where we’re going?!”Maki ignores further protest, exiting the vehicle without a glance in either’s direction.“Shuichi,” Kaito says suddenly, forcing Shuichi’s eyes to meet his in the mirror, “if Maki really did snap after the game and this is the last time I’m seen alive, make sure that the world knew Kaito Momota, someone that’s helped grandmas cross the street, and not Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, from that damn ga—“His voice cuts off into a shout when the door swings open and Maki grips his bicep, hauling him out with a strength that still scares Shuichi to this day. He is embarrassed to admit that the sight causes him to tremble, just a bit. It really is like those scary movies that Maki always picked out and promptly had to change due to Kaito making a scene and pretending to have things to do in other rooms while Shuichi almost always dropped whatever snacks they made for the evening on something, or someone. It was the splash of a hot beverage spilling over Maki’s pajamas that finally forbid the horror genre during their movie nights.There is little time for memories now—his door is forced open next, and Maki is there to block his exit. Not that he would run, but… but maybe he was considering it for a second or two.He decidedly does not create a fuss and exits the vehicle without Maki “encouraging” him.The sight before them doesn’t exactly look scary, but the run-down state of it does nothing to assuage his primary worry that they were about to step into a drug ring. The house clearly needed several renovations and care; this place had certainly been abandoned for decades.He notices details walking up to the front door, which could barely be considered a door with the way the hinges were falling off, leaving it crooked in the frame. One good kick would let just anyone inside, and not knowing who actually was inside set him further on edge. The yard they walked through had an overgrown lawn, not as tall as he would expect of a decade-long abandoned home, but it clearly had not been mowed for weeks now, yet somehow it produced random bald spots.Looking away from that, his eyes turned back to the front of the home where there were two windows on either side of the “door.” One of the windows had a bent shutter on it, covering the bottom half of the window, but the other’s shutter had fallen in the yard, revealing a cracked window that was surprisingly still in tact. Like the door, it was another easy entrance for the wrong type of person to find.Shuichi would sooner believe in his own strength to hold up the beams of this house than the support itself he sees on the—what one could barely call—porch of this house, peeling and semi-broken as they were.What a secure place to live, he thinks sarcastically. The alarm bells in his head hadn’t stopped ringing since the moment he laid his eyes on this miserable little place to live.“Y-You’re not taking us somewhere haunted, right, Maki Roll?” Kaito stutters, his legs shaking so severely that he reaches out a death grip that latches onto Shuichi’s shoulder, nearly taking him down a knee from the pain of it. “Cuz—cuz you know I don’t do haunted.”Maki snorts. “It’s not the house you have to worry about.”Kaito and Shuichi blanch.
What the hell does that mean?
On that horrifying note, she grabs their shoulders and starts to push them both forward.“That’s exactly what I’m saying! G-Ghosts, and all!” Kaito sputters, attempting to wriggle out of Maki’s grasp to no avail. She truly has what one would call “the death grip.”Together, the three of them approach the doorstep, and only then does Maki relent, stepping in front of them to hesitantly raise a fist to the door. She pauses, clearly mulling over something in her head. Before he can ask, her expression hardens, and she pulls out a key in her pocket.Inwardly, Shuichi breathes a sigh of relief. At least Maki frequents this house enough to have a key; how she obtained it is another matter he can leave alone for now.His momentary relief freezes over when Maki, instead of using the key as any normal visitor of the house would, holds it in one hand while she reaches out to the doorknob with the other, turning it and narrowing her eyes when it opens unobstructed.“Stupid,” she mutters under her breath.Shuichi knows not who or what she is referring to, too stricken by the thought that this house, whatever it meant to Maki, may have been infiltrated by an intruder. Thoughts of the worst-case scenario situations flood his mind—all drawing inspiration from the hundreds of reports he studied in the fictional lie Danganronpa filtered into his memories. Unnecessary details pop out of gruesome endings or permanent injuries that haunt the victims the rest of their lives.His lips tremble, opening to voice his concerns only for it to choke back down from his mounting curiosity, and it wars with his natural cautious nature. It has been too long that they went without answers for Maki’s disappearances every night, and Shuichi tries to reason that this curiosity is mostly influenced by his concern for his friend.So with his resolve strengthened, he follows Maki through the door into a world of darkness and possibilities, and Kaito follows behind with a painful grip on his shoulder.Within seconds of entering an unseeable house, Maki flips a light switch and casts a grainy orange glow on the features of the home, finally putting to rest one mystery swirling around his head.The house was no red herring; the inside tells the truth of an abandoned, small abode with wooden floors somewhat covered by torn and spotted carpets. Although the furniture was sparse, likely scavenged by squatters, there was a single rocking chair in the main entrance—a sort of living room, Shuichi guessed—and a long table crookedly placed in the middle. It was kind of charming, amidst the minimalist room.Admittedly, Shuichi expected to feel tense, unsure of who or what could be inside the clearly foreclosed home, but instead he pictures a small family playing cards around the table, or a lone grandparent rocking in the chair, content in a neighborhood full of familiar faces and friends.He supposes it has to do with the interior, reminding him of false memories where he visited his grandparents once in a blue moon, twice in total, and they had simply adored his young chubby cheeks and shy demeanor, poking at his so-called “beanstalk” form and asking if he’s been fed enough, and how often was he fed, and did he want to bring any leftovers home with him.The memory softens his guard, and he looks at the home in a new way. The dirt covering the ground from the many kids that would run into the house and forget to remove their shoes; the lack of furniture the result of an old-fashioned homeowner, content with the basics in life that involved a good book and an even better cup of tea; and the crooked table from the efforts of the first grandchild, eager to meet extended family and help out in any way possible, an innocent heart full of love.Beyond the room that Shuichi finds himself taken with, fabricating memories in his head of who lived here, there was a hallway that the light did not reach, shrouded in cover but hinting towards the rest of the story he desperately wanted to know. Maki moves towards this hallway, stepping forward and stopping just as swiftly.“Where are you?” Her question is oddly devoid of emotion, muttered under her breath more than spoken out loud with hopes of an answering call.Curious, he thinks.Maki turns, making her way to a different open room on the opposite side, where the light touched it to reveal the barest resemblance of a tiny kitchen, absolutely no counter space and several broken cabinet doors. It looked more like a storage room, and Shuichi would have guessed that if not for the oven smack dab in the middle of it.Maki forgoes any light switch while stepping inside the hall and sweeping her eyes over it, turning back around just as quickly.“Maki Roll, I’m seriously getting freaked out here,” Kaito murmurs from behind Shuichi, causing him to jump. He forgot Kaito was locked on to his shoulder; it had long since gone numb. “What are we looking for?”Maki does not answer. Her eyes remain peeled as she finally makes her way back to the hallway, pulling out her phone and using the flash.Shuichi follows a couple feet behind, but before he can peek over her shoulder, the flash disappears, and Maki steps into the dark.Shuichi freezes. “Maki?”It is disorienting to see Maki be enveloped by the night, so poorly lit that it was, and vanishing before his eyes. His body refuses to get any closer as it locks in place, the earlier fantasies clashing with the fake memories of bodies often hidden in the cramped, shadowed places.Two seconds later, his nightmare comes true.Maki walks backwards, hunched over, and an odd sound follows her footsteps. Kaito is trembling so violently behind him that Shuichi feels himself become aware of several factors at once: Kaito is right behind him breathing down his neck, perhaps his imagination had gotten the better of him earlier, and Maki is dragging a body out into the light.
Two Months Earlier
It’s too much.
The sounds were too much.“Hey, you okay there?”Kaito.Maki switches her gaze to his.He studies her with a pinched brow, and then his smile returns. “It’s nice out here, right? Sun’s a little hot, though. Let’s head back inside, yeah?”She releases her breath and nods.They make their way back to the motel, Kaito leading the way, but he stops every few feet to look back and ensure she was following.She is. She always is.He rambles. “Beach is a great vacation spot, but the summer is a popular time. Can’t ever have something so beautiful to yourself.” He looks back at her with a toothy grin. “Another pro for going to the moon—it’d be you and maybe three other folks that would get to see it, but you get to say you’ve seen it out of a handful of people.”Maki does not respond, but her mind settles with his voice. He never stares for too long. He always keeps her mind focused on the present even when it tries to drag her back to the past.When he slides his keycard in and opens the door, he pauses. Maki cocks her head at him in question.Suddenly, he turns to her once more with a gentle expression that takes her breath away again. “There’s something to say about beautiful things you only see once in a lifetime.” Cheekily, he adds, “Your smile, for one.”She shoves him into the room.He can’t move.Shuichi can’t move because Maki is dragging a body out of the hallway, Kaito is yelling beside his ear, shouting in surprise, and worst of all Shuichi recognizes the body.
One Month Earlier
“Get up.”Maki doesn’t know why she is here or why she continues to come back. Maybe it had to do with closure; maybe there was something she felt she needed to hear before putting an end to it, but she has had enough. She’s wasted too much time on this, and it is a mere matter of days before she’s found out. It’s time to tie loose ends and throw the proverbial rock into the stream, so that it sinks into the depths of the water, never to surface again.It doesn’t move.She nudges it with her boot. Nothing. She adds a little more force.A groan greets her.“Get up,” she repeats.Honestly, it’s a pitiful sight. If she wasn’t so sick of this game, she’d almost relish in the scene before her, because it’s deserved.But all it does now is inconvenience her, and she doesn’t have much patience.“Move, or the next touch will be from my fist.”That brings about something. It goes to push itself up, but it almost falls flat again when it reaches for a better grip, instead stumbling on the brown bottles scattered all over the floor. There isn’t much to grip on, if she’s being honest; aside from the liquid that leaked out of the bottles, there are other… bodily fluids, puddled around, creating the slippery surface on the floor.Another inconvenience. For her.There is nothing but revulsion that she can muster up at the picture. She always thought there was a cold, dull stone where her heart was; she almost thought she’d never feel anything but indifference and desperation again, but then Kaito came into her life and showed her color. He showed her spirit and taught her how to live again.Now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, this one came back into her life again. The one that made her feel hatred, towards herself and it, and every day she learns a new, disgusting flavor of emotion curtesy of this burden brought back into her life.She hates this miserable cycle.“Is that..?” Kaito’s death-grip finally lightens up as he moves beside Shuichi, peering over his shoulder. Maki pulls the body right past them, not even looking up and depositing it beside the crooked table.Shuichi’s throat is closing in on him, but he struggles out, “K-K…”The sight was undeniable before him, yet he did not want to speak it out loud; it felt too real then. The possibility that this body was kept hidden from himself and Kaito for months, that Maki could have…He can’t help it. His eyes turn on Maki, and he meets her resolute gaze.
Two Months Earlier
He shades his eyes from the view. It is so hot.Embarrassingly, he finds himself at the back of the group. Maki had long since gone out of view, and Kaito is surprisingly keeping up a better pace, coming up on her by about three meter’s length.Shuichi is… much farther behind.His work does not always keep him sedentary, but most days he asked for the paperwork over field work. After the events of the fifty-third killing game, the revelation of the simulation, and the year of therapy afterward, he finds his heart can’t take much more “action” in his mid-twenties. A shame, for sure, as someone still so young in many’s eyes, but he thinks he’s lived two lives at this point and he’s content to take the safe choice that leads to a calmer future.It has especially helped in blending into the crowd and creating a new life for himself.Unfortunately, that also affects his sense of adventure, so a hike like this puts him at a severe disadvantage to two individuals who have traveled across half the world, mostly by foot.Shuichi isn’t particularly inactive, but he is much, much less active than his two best friends, Maki and Kaito. Regardless, he would never miss an opportunity to spend time with them, especially after so many months apart and finally deciding to settle nearby to Shuichi’s home. He did not think they would stay long, with Kaito wanting to see the world and Maki following to the ends of the earth—maybe to the moon, even, one day—but, for now, he lives next to his two best friends, and he is happy.He is also panting.He stops, his legs protesting another step. He doesn’t know how long it has been, how many miles they have hiked, but he is exhausted and needs to catch his breath lest he pass out.Heavy breaths escape his mouth as he pushes his feet to the nearest tree, throwing up an arm and leaning heavily into it knowing he cannot stay too long. Getting lost out in the wilderness is not on his bucket list. It could be on Kaito’s, though.He closes his eyes, head down, and he feels that his bangs are sticking with sweat to his forehead. After a couple of seconds, he finds he can tune out his loud panting and instead focus on the sound of escaping footsteps, crickets, and birds.It is so loud compared to before.He marvels at the thought.“Why didn’t you say we needed to slow down?”Shuichi jumps, startled by Maki’s sudden presence. He finds himself stunned from speaking; he didn’t even hear her approach while listening.She lightly whacks him on the head in scolding. “Just tell us.”“A-Ah, sorry,” he reflexively apologizes. “I guess I can’t keep up with two world travelers.”The corners of her lips uptick in a small smile, and he finds himself mirroring it. “We’re not done yet,” she says softly. “But we’re done for now.”“I’m glad.”She eyes him. “We missed you.”Shuichi finds himself gobsmacked again, jaw dropping at her casual affection and honest words. She never used to be this open. He guesses it really has been a while since he was able to catch up with them properly and not through sketchy Internet connections over video call.“I’ll go tell Kaito to slow down.” And like that, she leaves.Leaning up against the tree, mouth remaining open, Shuichi feels his heart grow lighter. I missed you, too.“Y-You—did you kill..?” Shuichi swallows. Could she have really..?Because he is already looking at her, Shuichi sees the second Maki’s face falls, hurt blooming across her face so quickly that he feels himself instinctively opening his mouth to apologize, to beg for forgiveness for such an accusation against his one of his closest friends, but he is interrupted before he can even begin.“Whoa, is that… Kokichi?” Kaito exclaims, evidently unhearing of Shuichi’s accusation. “What happened to him?”The body, Kokichi, looks close enough to the visual that haunted Shuichi’s nightmares during the worst hours of the night when his brain formulated depictions of what Kokichi would look like dead, minus the copious amounts of blood that he was always drenched in.He is so pale, dressed in ragged clothing that looks several sizes too large on him, surprisingly in warm colors of maroon and beige for the fitting fall weather. He wears a quarter-sleeve collared sweater that gapes a little too much around his neck to properly fit him, and the material itself looks dull and worn; however, the fit of the outfit may have to do with the alarming thinness in what Shuichi can see in his wrist, in the bones of his cheek being more prominent than he remembers, and the sunken state of his eyes. Those eyes are closed, but his face does not hold the peace one would expect in such an unconscious state. No, his expression was pinched in pain, it looked like.In pain.“Is… is he still alive?” He had to be.Kaito immediately snaps to attention while Shuichi stands frozen, rushing to Kokichi’s side and pressing a finger to the base of his throat, checking for his pulse.The scene before him hits Shuichi like a truck, and he is suddenly faced with an urgent need to leave—to run.
It’s just like the game.
A body has been discovered!
Another blackened.
The killing game has started!
Who would do this to our friend?
Shuichi runs.He runs past the body, past Kaito and Maki, who looks at him with pained eyes, past another victim, and past the one person in the game that he could never truly, honestly figure out his feelings for: Koki—A burst of cold air shocks him into taking a breath, and he realizes he is outside. The door slams shut behind him, and it clues him into how he got here: running outside, slamming the door open, and, once again, running from his problems.It’s too much.
He’s not supposed to be here.
Shuichi can’t do it; he can’t go through this pain again. It took him so long to work through the hurt, the nightmares. He woke in the dead of night for months, screaming for the blackened to stop! and for his friends to forgive him. He woke up to a hoarse throat and a tear-streaked face, to feeling the worst kind of loneliness for years. He still hadn’t fully healed; he still kept to himself despite the physical pain of his solitary life.Maki and Kaito were the balms that temporarily took the pain away, and he does not even know how bad he will spiral when they inevitably leave again and he just can’t—He can’t—
Not again—!
“Shuichi!”The pain of two steel-like grips on his shoulders ground him, and a face is suddenly too close to his, eyes being forced to make contact with his, and the shock snaps him to the present.The present, where Maki is staring at him with a mix of concern and something unreadable. He finds himself unable to speak, the words curling up and dying in his throat when he attempts to thank her.Maki’s lips thin. She lets go of his shoulders once she confirms he is back with her. “He’s alive.”A fear Shuichi didn’t know was weighing on his heart is lifted at that comment, finding himself breathing more easily.Maki looks away. “…I didn’t kill him.”The pit in his stomach drops. “I—I know you would never—““You asked me,” Maki interrupts.“I—!” He messed up. He royally fucked up, and he knows. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he admits, and the shame washes through him. “I’m sorry, Maki.”Maki doesn’t say anything. She just turns around and leaves.He doesn’t want to, the anxiety pitting inside his stomach and twisting his insides viscerally, but he knows he can’t stay outside. Like a pitiful dog, Shuichi follows quietly behind her back into the house. Inside, Kaito has Kokichi’s head in his lap, tapping on his cheek and attempting to wake up an unconscious Kokichi.Shuichi can’t explain the surge that drives him forward, but he quickly finds himself next to Kaito and removing Kokichi’s head from his lap. “Wait, Kaito, let me. Please.” Up close, he sees the details in Kokichi’s older face now—they are all still quite young, but Kokichi looks the most weathered out of all four with his sunken cheeks. It’s like he hasn’t been eating, or caring at all for his body.Shuichi brushes a couple of strands of hair covering his face. He almost smiles—his hair is the same, perhaps a bit more greasy, a bit thinner, but just as messy and long. He remembers finding it charming in the game, thinking it was just as wild as his character.His eyes draw down to his cracked lips, and he doesn’t even recognize his finger coming up to brush across them, feeling the dry texture of them, as if water never even graced the surface of them.
Oh, Kokichi. What happened?
The sight before her is a sorry one but, unfortunately, not unfamiliar these last couple of weeks.Passed out on the floor and surrounded by those familiar brown bottles, her former classmate lays splayed out with a puddle of drool growing around the cheek squished to the floor.
What a pitiful sight.
He deserves it.
He ruined lives for fun.
He can suffer on the outside for it.
It would be karma at its finest.These are all thoughts she has had over and over again. Today, Maki indulges in the easy feeling of irritation. It is a simple logic that picks at her: if given a second chance, do right by it. This? This is wasting it.Kokichi stirs, first a small twitch in his limbs before he suddenly and violently picks himself up to twist over on his hands and knees, dry heaving up bile.“You’re disgusting,” Maki reflexively says, peering down at him with undisguised loathing. He should know how repulsive he is as a human being.Kokichi doesn’t answer right away because he can’t, but once he’s finished his heaves, his dull eyes stare down at the mess inching its way closer to his hands, and his face takes on a thoughtful expression. “Disgusting,” he mumbles, “Yeah, I’m disgusting.”It’s the first words he’s spoken to her in weeks. The last month he was mostly nonverbal, not registering her presence and in a drunken haze most days. He doesn’t lift a finger to eat, but he’ll fight her for a bottle of hard liquor.Of course.Her anger grows. “You are a waste of a human being,” she seethes.Kokichi spits on the floor, scrunching his nose likely at the aftertaste. “Yeah, yep. A waste,” he numbly agrees. His words are an afterthought, like his intention is to placate her. It pisses her off.“What use is there in living if you’re just going to rot away in here and not take the second chance you’ve been given?” she pushes.A part of her is appalled by the notion that she truly desires an answer to this question. His only purpose at this point is to reach for the bottle, and it only serves to make him sick. She can’t see any benefit aside from not having to live in the moment with himself or his past actions. She decides that must be it. He’s realized how despicable he is as a human being, and he’s decided slow poison is the way to go.How fitting. His method of death puts a burden on others.What a coward. At least do it yourself.And that—that lights a fire inside her. All her childhood, and for all her life as a result, she believed she had done the dirty work for others: to protect them, to help them continue to live, and she ended their lives, too, when it was told of her to do so. It was always her that had to do these things, being the caretaker or doing the dirty work, and she never had a chance to be the one cared for in return, to even be a kid. She was so tired of being given responsibility without being given a choice.But Kokichi? He’s been given nothing but choices and yet he still chose—he still chooses—In her anger, she finds a sole target to direct it to, and she releases it. She kicks Kokichi in his side from where he is crouched on the ground, and it surprises her how easy it is to knock him over, like her foot went right through him. He lets out a pitiful yelp, and just… falls over like that.She’s kicked rocks that put up a better fight than that.It… pisses her off even more.Kokichi starts to laugh; it’s a wet laugh, and Maki’s regret sinks in the moment she spots blood on his teeth. “You’re perfect for Kaito,” he sneers, “with both of you being so prone to violence.”“Shut up,” she snarls, and she knows she needs to work quick as she falls to her knees beside him, lifting him up and pulling off his shirt to look for bruising.He continues to laugh. “This isn’t the first time,” he cackles. His arms remain limp at his sides as Maki grabs his wrist to lift up one arm, then the other. She doesn’t see any blood pooling, but that doesn’t mean he is in the clear yet. She needs to find the source. “This isn’t the first time,” he repeats through harsh laughter.Frantically, she pokes at his face, lifting his head to check his nostrils. Finding no blood there, she pulls down an eyelid to examine his eyes. His words register a minute later, and she mutters in frustration, “What the hell are you talking about?”He doesn’t answer this time, but his laughter fills the silence in the room. It’s become quieter, but it causes his body to tremble through her examination.Finally, she decides she needs to further inspect his mouth, so she presses a finger to his chin and pulls it down, essentially opening his mouth for him, and she can’t focus on anything but the red staining his teeth. Shaking herself out of it, she steels herself, reaching inside his mouth to pull out his tongue next.She heaves a deep sigh, feeling the tension drain out of her body. “You bit your tongue,” she states, releasing him at once to wipe her hands on her shirt, and he falls over like a lifeless doll. She’ll have to wash them later regardless—her clothes and his.“Orrrrr… someone kicked me over, causing me to bite my tongue, but who knows?” Kokichi shrugs his shoulders from where he lays on his back on the dirty ground. “There’s only one reliable witness here, so..!”Maki scowls at the implication, standing up to put distance between them again. She wonders how anyone could feel pity for such a despicable human. “You could have done it on purpose, too.”She leans down, pulling him up by his arm with the slightest difficulty; he may be underweight, but a person that doesn’t want to get up is dead weight regardless.He doesn’t look at her, but his voice is knowing as he comments, “Wooow, kicking a guy when he’s down, huh? It’s a wonder we ever thought you were a caregiver. Oh wait, I didn’t.”The reminder stings, and she lets go of him as if she was burnt by the words alone. He falls heavily on his knees back to the floor, and she openly stares at him.“Why?” is all she can utter.“Why what?” he cheekily responds.“Why are you this…” She struggles for the right descriptor to capture this sorry state, his utter incompetence, this waste. Where was the antagonist, the killer? The so-called mastermind? Why does he hide now, his true self, when he basked in the cruelty of the game openly before?Why, why, why… is he this…“This useless?” she finishes with utter exasperation in her tone.“Useless,” he repeats, and the way he says the word is almost revered. “I’m useless. Yeah. Hey, what was my role, Maki Roll?” He turns to her with piercing eyes, and all she can do is stare, confused. “Was I… the antagonist? I thought so, right. I mean, Ultimate Supreme Leader, lookie here! That’s got evil overlord all over it, right?”He splays his hands out, like he is pleading with her, but for what, she doesn’t understand. She watches him from where he is, splayed out on the ground, a crazed smile growing on his face as he continues.“But they got angry. They didn’t like that.” He pouts. “You know, you’re not a real killer. I’m a real killer. Assisted suicide, intention to kill, manipulation—you name it! Kaito’s a real killer, too! Did you know that?” He grins with those crescent-shaped eyes, the ones she hates. “I was alive when it happened. You know, when the press…” he squishes his hands together, trailing off. “But what was the point, really? Was I to mix things up? Add a little spice? Maybe I could have been the new love interest after Kaede died, right?” His eyes flash at that, and suddenly his stare is intense, unmoving, that she feels herself freeze up. “They couldn’t have that, though,” he continues, his temporary glare transformed to focus, but not on her. No. Not on her. “No one liked the new love interest. Not even the protagonist, haha! Sweet, lovely Kaede, who could replace her?”At this point, Maki begins to understand that this wasn’t directed at her at all to begin with.He doesn’t notice her expression change. His eyes are elsewhere. “Really? What other point is there to an Ultimate Supreme Leader? The other rival, the unlikable guy, the one that always ruins the good mood! No one believed me, no one listened—aha, of course, by choice! So, that’s what I did, right? I added spice, I added friction—I wasn’t boring. Nuh-uh, no way.”Before her eyes, she witnesses the crumble of a previously esteemed character; her confusion long since dead with her realization. His eyes have moved to the floor, and his voice went quieter with every sentence. Maki quietly walks to stand behind him.“So, what was the point, really?” he mumbles.She bends over his prone form, lifting him up from under his arms, and, slowly, they walk to the bathroom together.The rest of the evening is quiet except for the sounds of water. “Move him to the shower,” Maki directs them, already presumedly walking in that direction as a couple seconds later the sound of running water is heard amidst cabinet doors shutting.Kaito eyes Shuichi. “Together?” he prompts, moving around to grab Kokichi’s legs.Shuichi looks down once more on their passed out classmate, worried about his unconscious state, before turning to nod his head at Kaito and prepping his arms under Kokichi’s back. Upon lifting, they both come to the realization that it is easier than expected—he is not feather-light per se, but the weight isn’t what it would be, say, if they were lifting Shuichi himself instead.When they reach the bathroom, Maki is standing beside a propped up stool, barefoot, holding a pail of water.“Set him on the stool,” she directs in a dispassionate tone.Shuichi and Kaito stop dead in their tracks with Kaito reacting first to her words while Shuichi’s stomach twists. “Whoa there, Maki, you don’t need to do that. We’re here and we’re guys, you know? We can do this part.” Kaito attempts to appeal to Maki with an understanding tone, but his expression screams uncomfortable.Shuichi swallows. He finds the ugly feeling in his stomach growing once again.Maki nose scrunches. “I’m not going to bathe him. I’m going to wake him up.”“Oh.” Kaito blinks. “Yeah, okay.”Shuichi hesitates, but ultimately follows Kaito’s footsteps to the stool. He finds this to be a bit mean when it is so clear something is wrong with Kokichi. Even as he walks forward, he argues, “Shouldn’t we at least try shaking him a little? Or—““He won’t wake up to that,” Maki shuts him down quickly, and he nearly flinches back from her tone. She seems to recognize this as she adds on softer, “Not in this state.”“In this state?” Kaito repeats questioningly. He and Shuichi gently place Kokichi down, whose head falls forward immediately. They have to place a hand on each shoulder just to keep him upright.“Just—trust me,” is all Maki says, and then she dumps the bucket of cold water over Kokichi’s head.