Chapter Text
Aoi gave them time – God knew they'd need it. Akane would surely want to tell Junpei everything she could, and...if Aoi couldn't save her, he at least owed her that much.
He needed the time himself, anyway. Deep breaths. There was still work to be done. He couldn't very well come over the loudspeaker bawling like a fucking toddler.
But the deadline was approaching. Aoi stepped out in front of the doors to the chapel. He mustered his strength and brought the radio to his mouth.
"Game over."
Junpei's panicked voice echoed in the empty chapel. "Zero...You son of a bitch! Where are you hiding?!"
Aoi sighed. "I am right here. I've always been close to you."
Truths were easier to tell right now, and there was hardly any sense lying at this point. Aoi was close by. Zero was close by, too. Not that Junpei could possibly understand. Not in this timeline.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
Aoi seriously considered throwing the radio at the ground. He forced calm into his voice. "No matter. I will tell you again: Game over." He sighed. "This game has ended."
"No!" He could hear the sound of Junpei shifting as if to stand, but he seemed to think better of it with Akane still in his arms. "No, it hasn't! I'm not gonna let it end yet!" There was a desperate edge to his voice. "I'm gonna get out of here with Kanny!"
Aoi could kill him right now, he really could. He was like a voice for every stupid hopeless thought in Aoi's head right now, and it was making him sick.
"You can't. That is impossible." His grip on the radio was turning his knuckles white.
"Why?!"
"Because you chose the wrong path." He wished against all reason that there could somehow be more time, that he could keep Junpei here and explain everything to him. That he could somehow drill into him every stupid little detail about the morphogenetic fields so Junpei would at least understand how collossally he'd fucked this timeline up for everyone.
But that isn't what Akane had remembered, and this timeline needed to be utterly perfect. This one was too important to make that kind of mistake with.
"The wrong path…?"
"That is correct. Your path was inevitable, however. Admit defeat." Aoi ran a hand through his hair. "Where there is shadow, there is light. Where there is the absence of light, there is no shadow. So it goes."
"What are you talking about?!"
I wish I fucking knew. "It matters not. The loser has been decided."
"I told you, I'm not gonna lose!"
Stupid brave idiot. He'd been the one to open the box eight hours ago and now he wanted to try and resuscitate the fucking cat. "No. You misunderstand. You haven't lost." Aoi slumped against the wall next to the door. His voice was barely more than a whisper. "I...have lost."
"What?!"
He couldn't take it anymore. He shoved the full weight of his body into one of the doors, making it creak open loudly, and then took off running.
Junpei called out somewhere behind him, but Aoi shut out the noise. If he dared look back, he knew all too well what he'd see.
What he wouldn't see.
So he balled his hands into fists and just ran.