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His father slides a rather thick photo album in front of him as they sit in the kotetsu on a wintry January night.
“Look what I found, Korekiyo!” he exclaims with (inexplicable) delight. “I thought I’d lost this when we moved a long time ago.”
“What is it?” he asks point-blank, sipping his tea and absentmindedly opening the front cover.
“This might surprise you, but when you and your sister were this — ” (he gestures to the top of the kotetsu) “ — high, we took a lot of pictures of you two. We put them all in here.”
He starts leafing through the album; it’s lovingly organized by year with small notes in hurried hiragana written underneath each photograph. His mother, he supposes, has never had much else to do as a sentimental housewife but embalm childhood memories.
“Is there a reason I should care about this?” Korekiyo asks flatly, eyes lingering on a picture of his sister beaming into the camera as she pinches his cheeks in his sleep. If the tab on the side is to be believed, they were five years old in this.
“Ah, you say that, but you’re smiling.”
Now that his father points it out, he does feel that familiar tension in his face.
“I suppose I’ve just forgotten all about these things.”
He turns the page and sees a photo of them standing in the doorway in their school uniforms — presumably the first day of school, given the date of April 3rd inscribed above the picture. They’re both holding hands and smiling — his sister, her signature radiant grin, and he, his reluctant upturn of the lips.
“Well, it’s good to remember.”
Tenko and Korekiyo Chabashira, age 6.
※
“Just ride on mine,” he says with a sigh.
“But I want to do it myself!”
Tenko mounts the bike once again, eyebrows knit in fierce determination. Her legs just barely reach the pedals and her sense of balance is not so refined as to let her go more than a few meters before wobbling around dangerously.
“It’s gonna get dark before we come back if we don’t leave soon, Tenko. I’ll teach you later!”
She pouts, but she sets her own bike against the side of the house and hops on the back of his seat, swinging her legs and wrapping her arms around him.
“Well, you wouldn’t get it! I’m almost eight and I can’t even ride a bike!”
“Just quit whining already.”
They speed down the sidewalk along a row of cherry blossom trees. The sun has just begun to set; the flowers look orange in the light, pink in the shadows.
“Wow,” she says in wonder. “It’s so pretty! Look, Korekiyo!”
“If I looked, we’d crash.”
She continues to remark on how beautiful it is all the way until they circle back around and ride the trail back home. They make it just before dark.
“We can practice more tomorrow,” he says with pronounced resignation as he sets his bike next to hers.
“No, I like riding with you better.”
She skips into their house, humming a song he’s never heard before.
※
“Morning!”
Tenko’s singsong voice reverberates throughout the house as her feet pound against the stairs on her way down.
“The neighbors could still be sleeping, you know,” he says without looking up from his book.
“Come on, we’re graduating today! Aren’t you excited?” she chastises.
“I’ve no reason to be.”
“People are gonna make fun of you for talking like that when we start school again,” Tenko sneers as she deftly works her hair into her signature pigtails.
“Tenko, please, you’ve got to look like a young woman today,” her mother urges. “Put your hair back down.”
“But Mom,” she whines, shuffling her feet impatiently. “Other girls are going to be wearing their hair however they want! It’s not as formal as you think!”
His mother’s shoulders droop and she shakes her head.
He could have told them both that this would happen before they even began arguing.
※
He isn’t sure why she wants him to read to her so badly when they’re both perfectly capable of reading. Really, they’re nine now. This doesn’t feel right.
Nevertheless, he concedes to her whim, without fail, every night.
“Can we read The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter tonight?” she asks, lying on her stomach and swinging her legs back against the wall.
“Again? That’s getting so tiresome,” he whines, but he reaches over the edge of the bed into her bookcase and plucks her tattered copy from its place between two light novels.
“You always use those big words just to sound smart.” She puffs her cheeks out but her eyes are twinkling with amusement.
“I don’t. I just read more than you.”
“Okay, okay.” She tucks herself under her sheets as he sits crosslegged on the foot of her bed. “You can start now.”
He clears his throat.
“Long, long ago, there lived an old bamboo-cutter among the bamboo shoots in the mountains. Every morning he went into the woods where the bamboo grew...”
He reads by the soft light of the desk lamp until her eyes flutter shut, her dark hair fanning across the pillow. His own eyes feel heavy, and her rhythmic breathing is making the task of staying awake all but impossible.
He reads until the very end anyway.
※
In sharing a class and a family name, Korekiyo and Tenko are seated next to one another, donned in the uniforms of the high school they’ll soon be attending.
He’s on the verge of falling asleep, but the quiet rattling of her chair as she kicks against it in excitement (unfortunately) keeps him awake until his name is called. He does what he must; he bows, he takes the diploma, and strides back to his seat without fanfare.
“Tenko Chabashira!”
She leaps to her feet and walks briskly toward the podium where their homeroom teacher is awarding the diplomas, hardly containing her joy. She bows quickly before taking her diploma and flashing a cheeky smile in front of the crowd before returning to her seat.
His heart skips a beat; he’s been here before.
※
Korekiyo is not a child equipped to participate in a sports festival.
After putting in a paltry effort in a game of tug-of-war, he retreats to his parents’ spot on the sidelines and clamors for a water bottle as they wait for Tenko’s event. After some shuffling around of the students, she bounds across the field and springs into view on the track.
The participants begin lining up in their appropriate places. Tenko positions herself at the starting line for the 100-meter dash, the pads of her fingers touching the track with her legs bent at an angle. Her expression screams that she’s not just going to win; she’s going to make everyone else lose. He would not want to be her competitor today.
The overseer for the event finally arrives and counts. As soon as the words leave their mouth, Tenko is off, almost too swift for his eyes to follow. He sees the flutter of her long braids behind her, but she’s almost on the other end of the track by the time his vision readjusts.
Naturally — oh so naturally — she comes out on top.
She jumps with uncontrollable exhilaration and flashes a toothy grin in their direction, bathing in the warm glow of victory.
Korekiyo blinks, and — as though someone roughly yanked an imaginary rug from underneath her feet — her eyes roll back into her skull as her legs fold and she collides with the ground.
That nauseating thud is louder than their mother’s screams and the onlookers’ gasps.
It echoes in his ears all the way to the hospital.
(It echoes for years to come.)
※
Korekiyo is tired of the ceremonies, but Tenko can’t get enough of them. There’s a spring in her step as they make their new morning commute. He only wishes he could say the same.
As they leave the train and begin to approach the school, her gait slows down until she stops entirely. He raises his eyebrows and stops beside her.
“What’s the matter?”
“Korekiyo,” she says seriously. He hasn’t heard this voice or seen this expression in a long, long time.
“I’m listening.”
“You know...” She trails off, wringing her hands and looking away uncertainly. “This year...Tenko wants you to let her take care of herself.”
She looks more mature now than she ever has. It leaves a bittersweet taste in his mouth.
“Okay,” he says simply.
She blinks, quirking an eyebrow in confusion. “That’s it?”
“Yes, that’s it. Although I’m sure you know that won’t stop me from worrying,” he adds.
She giggles. “Tenko knows that. You never stop worrying about anything.”
“Actually, I’ll amend that. If you do anything particularly stupid, I’ll have no choice but to step in.”
Her mirth is quickly replaced with a grimace.
“Fine,” she mumbles. “It’s a deal.”
※
She emerges from her coma two days later. The doctors ascertain that her faculties are largely intact aside from some confusion and dazedness, likely due to the expeditious resuscitation efforts of a nurse in the crowd during the sports festival. Still, they wait a full day to allow her to reorient herself to consciousness.
He has adopted the role of the wallflower, petrified of taking a single breath that might disturb her or anyone else in the room — let alone saying anything. So too is the case now as they explain Tenko’s condition to her and their parents. It’s a long phrase that means little to him despite being well-read.
“She should be able to live a mostly normal life,” one of them explains to their father — as though Tenko simply isn’t there, watching them with the wide eyes of an animal in captivity. “But changes will have to be made to accommodate her condition, and she’ll have to be consistently monitored as she grows older.”
Upon noticing their father’s glare, the doctors invite their parents to talk further in the hallway.
“Keep Tenko company, Korekiyo,” his mother whispers to him on the way out.
He doesn’t know what gave her the impression that he wouldn’t. After the adults have left the room, he hesitantly moves toward the side of her bed and takes a seat.
“What book did you bring?” she asks. Her voice is alarmingly raspy from disuse.
“I don’t think you’d like it. It’s just a bunch of poems.”
“It’s okay. Read it anyway,” Tenko beseeches with a weak smile.
“If you say so.” His hands are trembling as he opens his book to the page he left off on. “‘Rain, hail, snow and ice: all are different, but when they fall, they become the same water as the valley stream...’”
As he reads, his eyes flicker up to the hospital bed.
Her red-rimmed eyes are the color of sea glass as tears stream down her face.
※
They stop looking so similar as they stumble headfirst into the scourges of puberty. He grows nearly a full foot taller than her — his edges sharpen while hers soften. People begin asking how many years are between them.
(“We’re twins!” she always proclaims with her chest puffed out.)
His worry grows in tandem with their age.
She fits in seamlessly with their new environment and garners adoration from girls and boys alike. In a bid to capitalize on her new popularity, she joins the girls’ soccer club.
When she proudly tells them of her decision at dinner, their parents both open their mouths to say something, but he’s too fast for either of them.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
It comes out as a harsh demand, harsher than anything he’s said in a long while.
Tenko’s eyes dart towards their parents in a silent request for backup; when she receives none, she looks back to him.
“Tenko doesn’t understand. This is her decision. She’ll be careful.”
“Careful? Really?” Korekiyo suppresses the urge to laugh derisively. “Are you that selfish that you’d have us worry about you every day? Do you care about your life that little?”
“Tenko’s life isn’t anyone else’s to live!”
“Maybe someone else would use your life more responsibly —”
“That’s enough, Korekiyo!”
Their mother’s interjection, razor sharp, prompts them both to look towards her.
“That’s enough,” she repeats. She looks to Tenko. “I...I won’t say anything but this. Let him keep an eye on you, and don’t do anything rash.”
She then looks to him.
“And you — don’t say a word to her.”
Dinner proceeds in silence, as does the rest of the night.
※
Aside from an initial healing period characterized by anxiety and confusion, she largely returns to normal after her cardiac arrest. She has, however, picked up the curious habit of referring to herself in the third person — he vaguely wonders if she’s trying to remove herself from what happened to her.
Korekiyo finds himself endlessly frustrated at her lackadaisical attitude — does she not realize she practically looked death in the eye and shook hands with it?
When he makes the mistake of voicing his displeasure to his father, however, he does not receive the response he expected.
“Would you like it better if she were miserable and scared all the time?” his father reprimands. “She’s alive. Is it too much to ask to be grateful for that?”
He stands in silence, pressing his lips into a thin line. His father sighs.
“I know you’re scared, Korekiyo. So are we. But...her happiness comes first. And I know you know that even better than your mother and I,” he continues with a sad smile.
Yet, Korekiyo can’t stop himself from fretting, from growing livid when she deliberately puts herself in situations that could spell her end. He can’t stop her from doing what she wants — his father’s words are constantly emphasizing that at the back of his mind — but he can, at the least, keep an eye on her while she engages in her recklessness.
He himself does not rely on others; it doesn’t trouble him to eschew social interaction to hover nearby, reading a book or attending to schoolwork. His class silently grants him amnesty for abandoning the literature club and taking up a new position as his sister’s sentinel.
She’s playing with their school’s softball team today. The sun is unforgiving today, enveloping the entire campus in dry heat. Even he is sweating while situated under a tree in the shade.
(July 31st is only a few days away. They’ll be thirteen. Thirteen? That seems far too old, yet far too young, he thinks.)
Korekiyo looks up and sees her hand graze against her chest as her posture slackens ever so slightly — the signs are so subtle, it seems, that none of her peers can tell that there’s something wrong. His heart leaps into his throat.
“Tenko!” he shouts, scrambling to his feet and quickly making his way towards her. He grabs her hand and leads her to a spare bench. Her teammates are apparently startled, but they are, for all intents and purposes, a nonentity right now.
“Tenko will be okay,” she asserts cheerfully. Her frantic breathing and copious sweating attest to the contrary — perhaps most telling, however, is the way she wordlessly yielded to his direction. “She just needed to sit down for a minute.”
“Here. Let me at least do this.”
He produces a handkerchief from his bag with one hand and a water bottle with the other. She sits still and stares at the ground as he begins dabbing at her forehead and proffering the water bottle. Tenko takes the bottle and slowly unscrews the cap.
“Don’t do anything like that again,” he chides. “You know what the doctor said.”
“Yeah. Tenko knows,” she grumbles.
“Why don’t we go home?”
She looks at her teammates wistfully. “Tenko doesn’t want to...”
“I don’t want this to happen again.”
She frowns and looks down at him. Her eyes are large and sad, but the defeated note in her gaze tells him that he’s won this round.
She mutters an apology to her friends and lets him take her by the hand as they walk home together.
※
Ultimately, his parents do nothing to prevent her from participating in the high school soccer club. There is nothing they can do. They simply give him a knowing look before they leave for their morning commute.
Keep her safe.
They walk to the train station in silence — a jarring contrast from the days prior. Tenko sees a friend on the train and instantaneously gravitates toward her, leaving Korekiyo to stare out the window and mentally brace himself for the forthcoming day. They go their separate ways after disembarking — a trend that continues for the rest of the day until their final class. Korekiyo surreptitiously leaves homeroom and heads over to a bench near the walkway by the soccer field.
She’s there, clad in shorts and a loose t-shirt, slowly dribbling a ball back and forth between her feet as she listens to the team captain. He’s too far away from the field itself to hear what the captain is saying, but judging from the way they get into formation, they’re about to scrimmage.
As a prodigy of the art of kinesis, she masters the movements quickly despite her inexperience in the sport. She appears to catch even some of the upperclassmen off guard with her agility and spur-of-the-moment decisions.
His palms are clammy.
After the game’s conclusion, she bends over, hands on her knees — but there’s still that undying grin on her face.
He knows what’s going to happen if this continues.
“Tenko,” Korekiyo calls out, approaching the sidelines as she looks up and jogs over to him. “It’s time to go home.”
“But Tenko wants to stay,” she says with an anxious smile. He suppresses the urge to wince at her frantic panting.
“Tenko,” he warns, eyebrows knitting together in austerity as he places a hand on her forearm. “That’s enough, and you know it.”
That simple touch breaks something inside her.
She jerks her arm away from him and staggers back, pupils constricting with anger.
“Tenko is staying!” she shouts before turning on her heel and running back toward the field. “You can just go!”
Bewildered, he stares at his hand. He ransacks his memory for times when she lashed out so acerbically at him; he can’t think of any.
He can see the remnants of rage in her even from a distance.
※
Korekiyo begrudgingly admits that she’s been managing her activities well. Perhaps she really is learning her limits. At times, he must remind himself that physical activity wasn’t ruled out in its entirety — rigorous exercise is what must be avoided.
(It would not be such a problem if “rigorous” weren’t an intrinsic part of Tenko’s modus operandi.)
On this day, however, his muscles are wound into tight knots with the sickening anticipation of disaster as he watches her run (gracefully, he might add) and alternate her feet.
When the scrimmage is over, she sits on the bench and laughs, rubbing her arm — her eyelids hang heavy over her eyes, though, as though she’s about to fall asleep any moment.
Korekiyo is already on his feet when she slumps over on the bench.
One of her teammates shrieks. The captain shouts for someone to get the nurse. He recognizes that this is happening — it doesn’t mean anything to him.
He drops to his knees and clutches her face in his hands and yells her name before dragging her off the bench and onto the field, positioning his wrists over her chest.
“Wait!”
The nurse — a young woman with short hair — rushes over to them and kneels down beside him. He withdraws his hands (reluctantly) as she quickly places two fingers on Tenko’s neck with one hand and places her stethoscope on Tenko’s chest with the other.
The adrenaline begins to wear off and he can finally feel again. He can’t tell whether his face is wet from sweat, tears, or both.
The nurse withdraws and looks at him.
“It’s okay,” the nurse tells him gently. “It appears to just be heat exhaustion. Let’s get her under the shade.”
He hooks her legs around his waist and carries her underneath the tree by the field as the nurse follows. The nurse fans Tenko as she asks Korekiyo about her — he tells her about her condition. About how doing this at all was a mistake, yet she simply doesn’t listen.
The nurse looks sad.
He can only imagine how he must look.
※
“I’ve had enough,” he says quietly after they get home.
“Don’t say a single thing — ”
“What’s going on?”
Their mother emerges from the kitchen. Her eyes are already tired.
“Mom — ” Tenko begins, raising her hand to plea, but he won’t let her charm her way out of this one.
“She passed out today.”
“What?” his mother asks, though it’s more out of disbelief than a genuine inquiry.
“Mom, Tenko swears, she just forgot to — ”
“No more.” His gaze flickers between Tenko and his mother. “It won’t be heat exhaustion next time. You know that.”
“But Tenko — ”
“I’m not going to watch you anymore. Do what you want.”
He saunters up the steps and ignores her screams with everything he has.
※
He peers out of the living room when the door opens the next day — there she stands, face flushed and sweaty.
She never fails to find new ways to shock him. His frustrations have reached a fever pitch.
Korekiyo pointedly closes his book as she crosses the threshold into the house.
“So, my not coming didn’t deter you?”
“Shut up,” she snarls, throwing her bag against the wall to her side.
“It’s a wonder you’re not dead,” he counters coldly. If compassion couldn’t get through to her before, it certainly won’t now.
She advances on him in an evanescent moment and tackles and pins him to the ground.
“Tenko isn’t made of glass!” she screams in his face, as though she’s kept the words caged for years before they tore their prison apart. “You — You don’t even treat Tenko like a person!”
He attempts to shove her off, but — despite his stature — she’s stronger than him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he mumbles. He feels a thin bead of cold sweat trickle down his neck. “That’s — ”
“Stop! Just stop! Do you even think of Tenko as your sister? As someone who can do what she wants? No, you don’t. You never tell Tenko anything, but you get mad at her when she keeps secrets. You hate when Tenko tells you to do something, but you’re always ordering Tenko around — here, at school, in front of her friends, everywhere!”
Her face is red, her hair askew, and her whole body is quivering with raw emotion. He’s never been able to study her so closely before; it’s terrifying.
“That’s only because I — ”
“It’s not because you care, Korekiyo! It just makes you feel better than Tenko! That’s right. You’re strong and smart, and Tenko is just weak and sick, isn’t she? You can’t wait for Tenko to die so you can tell everyone what a good brother you were.”
She climbs off of him, but not before stepping on his foot roughly for good measure.
He can’t rise to his feet right away. His throat feels impossibly dry. He wants her to realize the gravity of what she’s just said, but it’s lost on her — as always, she is at the center of her own universe.
“Tenko told you to let her take care of herself. You said ‘okay.’ You couldn’t even keep that one promise,” she says through clenched teeth.
Dizziness clouds him as he finally stands.
“Because you can’t take care of yourself,” he responds lowly, shakily. “Clearly.”
She starts crying uncontrollably, shoving her face in her hands and falling back against the doorframe.
He makes something out between her sobs —
“Why can’t I protect you for once? Why can’t I protect someone?”
He hasn’t heard her say “I” in years. It’s the nail in the coffin.
Korekiyo isn’t granted the opportunity to respond before she turns on her heel and moves toward the door.
“Tenko doesn’t need you. Tenko doesn’t need anyone. She’s already made her decision,” she spits venomously before gathering her things and slamming the door behind her.
He sits down. His knees don’t stop buckling for hours.
He wonders, then, after all these years, if his protection did not protect her at all.
※
It’s been two days and she still hasn’t come home.
He quells his parents fears by assuring them that she’s at a friend’s house and that luring her back home would do more harm than good. In turn, they feebly attempt to tell him that it’s not his fault.
(“We knew your sister would do something like this someday.”)
Despite his best efforts, he finds himself embroiled in searing anxiety, a perpetual sense of unease that this is precursor to something far more drastic. He sees her at school, so he knows she’s (physically) safe — it’s what is to come that he fears the most.
Against his better judgment, he trespasses into her room after school one day and searches for clues.
It’s been several years since he actually crossed the threshold into her room. It has evolved somewhat over the past two years; the color scheme has gradually shifted from pink to green, and she’s broken out of her habit of wantonly scattering her belongings throughout the vicinity.
Korekiyo tentatively moves towards her desk. Notebooks and textbooks neatly aligned, memos meticulously placed on a corkboard — very little is out of place. He wonders (somewhat wistfully) if she took a page from his book.
(His eyes dart over to her windowsill; he exhales in subconscious relief when her medicine bottles aren’t there anymore.)
He sees a small piece of glossy cardstock admixed with some of the loose pieces of paper on the desk and his stomach lurches. He gingerly plucks it from the pile as though it might poison him.
DanganRonpa.
※
He asks around the school discreetly. His intimidating stature ensures that his informants are sworn to secrecy.
He manages to isolate one of her closer friends after classes are over for the day.
“Tenko...” The girl purses her lips and tugs at the pleats on her skirt. “I haven’t talked to her in a couple days, but the last time we talked, she told me she was going to apply for that show. You know the one? DanganRonpa.”
The hairs on the back of his neck stand up in abject fear.
In a twisted way, he understands her decision. What better way to exercise agency over one’s life than to gamble it away? What better way to find independence than to construct a new self entirely?
It comes part and parcel with the knowledge that he’s the reason for all of this.
Her friend’s teeth are practically chattering with anxiety.
“D-Did I say the wrong thing? Please don’t get angry, Chabashira-kun!”
“No, no. You told me exactly what I wanted to know. Thank you,” he says, his frigidity sounding foreign to his own ears as he makes to turn away. “By the way, I would appreciate it if you kept mum about this.”
The girl nods vigorously and scurries away.
When Korekiyo gets home, he pilfers the piece of cardstock from Tenko’s room and dials the number.
※
He gives them a pseudonym: Korekiyo Shinguuji. “Chabashira” is rare enough as a family name that it would undoubtedly alert the production team — or, worse, Tenko herself — to the fact that he’s doing this, and he doesn’t need anyone finding out any earlier than necessary.
In fact, he gives them a fake iteration of everything but his first name. They don’t ask for official identification, curiously enough. Perhaps they don’t care to know for whatever reason.
Korekiyo comforts himself with the fact that this is an indisputable win-win situation. If Tenko is chosen, he can be there for her. If she isn’t and neither is he, they both get to go home and forget all about this. If only he is chosen, and he wins, he gets the money, which can only help her as her medical demands increase; should he lose, he’ll die and she’ll never feel tormented again. The only scenario he actively avoids imagining is if she is chosen and he isn’t — as such, after reviewing past seasons, he has carefully constructed an illustrious, attractive persona that will surely pique their interest.
He’s called into the audition room — a bright room with beige wooden floors. Sitting at a desk towards the back wall is a young woman with long blue hair. A camera is above her, pointing down at the empty chair in front of the desk. He assumes that’s where he’s to sit; with faux confidence, he strides over to the chair and sits.
“Good afternoon and welcome, Korekiyo Shinguuji,” says the kind woman behind the desk. “First of all, thank you for expressing interest in DanganRonpa. I would like to ask you a few questions to get to know you better.”
He nods in affirmation.
“Quiet?” she teases.
“I would say so, yes,” he responds slowly.
“How charming.” She shuffles some papers before looking back up at him. “What would you say is your motivation for auditioning for our show?”
“I’m doing this for someone,” he replies with measured neutrality, unenthused about where this is going.
“Can you tell us a little more about that?”
He doesn’t like how she says “us” when she’s the only one there.
“My sister.”
“Your sister,” the woman repeats warmly as she takes notes. “That’s very sweet. What’s her name?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“That’s fine.” The look in the woman’s eyes makes it very clear that this is not, indeed, fine.
Her interrogation continues. She asks him why he’d be successful on the show, what talent he would ideally have, what he’s enjoyed about past seasons — he answers them all flawlessly, and he is well aware of it when he sees the twinkle in her eye. She looks positively thrilled by the conclusion of the audition.
“We can’t make any decisions on the fly, as I’m sure you know,” the woman tells him. “However, your personality is...intriguing. I think our viewers would enjoy that. We’ll be in touch, Shinguuji-san.”
Korekiyo nods. He’s confident that he successfully concealed his discomfort at hearing his new name.
“By the way,” the woman says as she escorts him out, “give your sister my regards.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets and grips the lining tightly.
※
“I’m feeling a bit unwell,” he states that night at dinner. He sets his chopsticks down and rises from the table. His eyes linger on the empty spot beside him.
His parents exchange weary glances; they do him the courtesy of bottling up their sighs.
“She’ll come home soon, Korekiyo,” his mother assures.
He peers down at his frail, frightened parents. They shrink back — he wonders how he must look.
“I hope you’re right, Mother.”
He doesn’t sleep that night.
※
They call him.
He’s been chosen.
(Tenko hasn’t been home for nearly three weeks.)
※
He receives a package of preparatory materials one week prior to the initial air date.
Korekiyo takes extreme care to wake up just before dawn and retrieve it before anyone else in the house has the chance to do so.
His eyes glaze over everything but two pieces of paper — the first, with a number, letter, and time written on it, and the second, a name tag stating Korekiyo Shinguuji, Ultimate Anthropologist.
An interesting choice of talent, he thinks sourly.
He leaves for school in one hour.
The dawn of the final week.
※
The day comes. Korekiyo leaves a note on his neatly made bed: I’m sorry.
He arrives at the location specified in the package. It looks like a small, unassuming research facility. He checks in with the tightlipped receptionist, who nods knowingly when they see his name tag, and is instructed to walk down the clinical white hallway, go through the black door, and go towards the last door to his right.
“Don’t go into any of the other rooms. The other contestants are in there, and the team would rather you not chat with them,” the receptionist tells him briskly.
As he makes his way down the hall, he looks down at the other piece of paper. It appears as though they’re being called back to the chamber in some kind of group by half-hour intervals, if 8f, 08:30 is any indication.
Korekiyo enters the room. It’s actually just a waiting room, much to his surprise. The walls are black, and there are exactly two white chairs situated against a wall. One of them is occupied.
He looks at his partner, and he’s treated to a sight that’s been with him since time immemorial.
She snaps out of her apparent reverie and averts her gaze toward him, face lighting up with excitement. “Hello! I’m — ”
The smirk dissipates; she freezes.
This is, in fact, what the rational part of him was hoping for, but his heart races at the possibility that the production team somehow knew.
“Korekiyo,” she whispers breathlessly. Her eyes are wide and watery with terror. “Why are you here?”
“Your friend told me you were trying to do this. I had to, too, because...” He trails off, attempting to gather his thoughts as he takes a seat beside her — a difficult task in the oppressive black atrium, with his fate lying beyond a solid grey door. “Even if you don’t need me, I don’t want you to be alone.”
(It’s not “I won’t let you be alone.”)
He closes his eyes, arms still firmly folded, and waits for the inevitable flamethrower of insults.
Instead, he hears gentle weeping. He opens his eyes and she’s rubbing at her face.
“Tenko,” he says mournfully — as though that will change anything.
She lays her head against his forearm. She doesn’t stop crying for several minutes, soaking his sleeve down to his skin.
“Korekiyo?”
“Yes?”
“Are you mad at Tenko?” she asks hesitantly. Her voice is still nasally from crying.
For a moment, he’s thrust back into their childhood when she still smiled for him.
“No, Tenko. I’m not mad.”
She looks down at the floor, her cheeks red and her breathing heavy. He grips his knees and attempts to silence the fraternal urge that rises to the surface.
“Korekiyo?”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t have to do this for Tenko.”
“I know.”
She plays with a braid, sighing shakily.
“Korekiyo?”
“Hm?”
She looks up at him. The fire in her green eyes has all but died down to a distant ember.
“It’s too late to go back, isn’t it?”
The air conditioning in the waiting room becomes cold and suffocating. Her bow flutters in the artificial breeze.
“Yes,” he murmurs. “Yes, it is.”
The door opens.