Work Text:
The hanging corpse’s swaying conducts the surrounding panicked heartbeats into a erratic hum; the chorus harmonising with the fitful banging of oversized piano keys. A fitting final performance from a pianist, he thinks. (Odd how even in death Akamatsu could hold the attention of her audience, though he supposes that it could have something to do with the strung up girl’s feet dangling lifelessly in the dread-laden air.)
Out of the corner of his eye Kokichi watches the detective, standing closest to the makeshift stage, open his mouth, but before he exhales his words are caught in his throat by the spiked piano lid clamping down on Akamatsu’s unmoving silhouette and then the only thing that’s left to cement her flickering existence into his mind’s eye is the spatter of blood that rains down at their feet and flecks the hat clenched tightly in Saihara’s fist.
And Kokichi laughs, because by morning her death would still be defined by nothing but her failure to follow her own preachings.
+
Interesting, he decides as a hatless Saihara enters the room. The detective hadn't appeared in an entanglement of stutters and blooming cheeks, but rather walked it a stiff stride and chin held obnoxiously high. Kokichi snorts. If all it took for Saihara to shift aptitudes was a little spilt blood, he wasn’t complaining.
He wonders how many times he’d be able to count all of the living faces scattered across the room before Saihara would truly start believing in his hand-me-down hope.
Kokichi laughs, because if his logic was sound- which it was- another set of deceased would soon follow.
+
Harukawa’s pale fleshed fingers dig into his neck with bruising strength. She’d be able to snap his neck with ease, as she’d likely done many times before.
Perhaps someone would save her from her self-made condemnation and perhaps she would save him the effort of contriving any other perfectly woven lies. He’s made his peace with either outcome.
Eventually the others' pleading loosens Harukawa’s grip and Kokichi’s free to skip back to the elevator, all the while with a worried Saihara tracing the map of irritated skin on his nail-bitten neck with his gaze. It makes him feel special for all of the minute that the rattling ascent lasts.
That night he scratches out misshapen hearts on the surface of his desk, too afraid to acknowledge their meaning with impermanent ink staining his whiteboard. Saihara’s small portrait shifts two spaces away from the rest.
Kokichi laughs, because none of it would hold any meaning and in the morning Saihara would still be the same naive detective pining after a dead girl who’d never been given the time to return his love and Kokichi’d greet the world with the same lies dripping from his tongue.
+
Yonaga makes it easy to hate her and her little cult. Each sentence she spins speaks of an illusionary god that grows in might with each fabricated statement, but Kokichi has never held any interest in gods when men were the ones who’d ruled the world he knows.
Her death comes as no surprise and to his irritation the ritual continues. He allows his injury to be presumed as his death as a prank to draw away attention from the mess of a religion. A joke that isn’t taken well. But in the end it doesn’t matter because that’s all Yonaga and her god would ever be. A joke.
And when the trial’s finished, Kokichi laughs, because maybe it did take a celestial being to allow a man as godless as Shinguuji to kill someone who believed herself to be as holy as Yonaga.
+
Kiibo’s speech is calculated, yet still lacks the refinement of his own. The robot’s failure to understand human emotions allows Kokichi to settle in his company rather easily, which he takes advantage of.
On one of the seldom occasions that he hadn’t remained within the isolation he’d sentenced himself to, Kokichi regales Kiibo with the abbreviated tale of Pinocchio. He watches Kiibo carefully as he retells the ending and the robot seems to momentarily lose himself within a spiral of longing.
“Does Kiibo-chan want to be a real boy too?”
Kiibo’s metallic armor creaks softly as he jerks upwards. “H-how dare you! I’ll have you know that-”
Kiibo’s cut off as Kokichi presses his lips against the robot’s synthetic mouth.
“...”
Kokichi darts away, giggling. Once he reaches his room his smile fades.
And his laughter turns bitter, because he’s not quite sure whether Kiibo’s synthetic lips had been colder than his own.
+
Iruma’s found comatose when they exit the simulation to everyone’s surprise but his own.
Gokuhara stares in confusion and horror and Saihara pales.
And Kiibo’s metallic fists clench and clench and tremble.
And Kokichi laughs and laughs and laughs, because in the end Kiibo’s tears were yet another testament to the fact that he was more human than Kokichi’d ever be.
+
The other’s ignore his existence to the best of their abilities. Except Saihara. Sweet Saihara who approached him with caution and remained unsolvable.
Saihara’s picture moves another three spaces away from the rest and Kiibo is returned to the one space he’d moved away.
+
“You’re a fucking mess.”
Finally something he and Momota and could agree on.
“Eh?” Kokichi stares at him with wide eyes. “And here I thought that Momota-chan liked my plan.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sakes! Enough! We’re both about to die and I can’t take anymore of your bullshit. Yeah, yeah. You don’t have anything to live for other than being an annoying shit. I get it.”
Kokichi thinks of the ten faces that had formed DICE along with his own in a haze. He keeps his mouth shut after that.
The poison coursing through his veins seems to accelerate the speed of its destructive march and Kokichi struggles to keep himself upright, his shoulder grazing the wall.
“C’mon man, stay with me for a few more minutes,” a pale Momota pleads, proceeding to painstakingly lift him onto the table.
“Hey, Momota-chan? Say goodbye for me?”
He thinks he sees Momota nod before forcing the press down.
As the metallic surface hangs mere millimeters above his face, Kokichi mutters a prayer to a non-existent god begging that there’s anyone left for him to send his farewells to.
He doesn’t find the strength to gurgle out a laugh.