Work Text:
Gonta’s sleep the night after the trial is disjointed.
The mattress his bulk is spread across is too soft and dips so easily underneath his weight while his guilt remains frigid and unyielding. Indistinguishable silhouettes shift across the room, painting the walls a solid black; lapping at his wavering eyelids. He tries to keep his eyes pried shut, Gonta really does, but he can’t seem to be able to do so as the same indecipherable bright red letters that had solidified Akamatsu’s guilt are further engraved into his darkened vision by his own. No, sleep is an unseen beast that night, prowling beneath thickly lain shadows and feasting on thriving insecurities.
Gonta tosses his body restlessly for a last time before foregoing the creaking frame entirely and plopping onto the floor. He wills his eyes shut once more.
~
His restraint breaks along with dawn. Gonta shuffles out of his room and through the dorms until he’s stumbling out into the morning air.
The sun’s barely broken through the night sky if the pink-hued light seeping through barred walls was anything to go by. If he concentrates hard enough, Gonta can almost see the same sunrays curling over high tree tops, almost taste the crisp air of that which only nature could breathe. But there’s no chirping of crickets to be heard, or rushing of water to echo. The world is still and the comforts the forest brought could only do so much.
A notebook still lies nestled snugly into his pocket and Gonta traces thick fingers across sharp ridges. It wasn’t as if he could grace the pages with anything other than illegible scrawls.
Absorbed in his thoughts, Gonta doesn’t notice Hoshi until his foot is planted mere millimeters from his lap. The sudden appearance of the other causes Gonta to startle and jump backwards.
Barely having regained his balance, he tilts his head in an exaggerated bow. “Good morning, Hoshi-kun. Gonta apologizes for the intrusion!”
It’s clear to both that Gonta hasn’t interrupted anything much by the graveyard of half-smoked cigarettes scattered at Hoshi’s feet, but Gonta still had his manners to think of. He swallows his fear and readies himself to interact with the ex-tennis player.
“W-would Hoshi-kun mind if Gonta joined him?”
Hoshi doesn’t show any signs of reaction and Gonta isn’t sure whether to repeat himself. He opts to clear his throat as softly as possible.
Silence. Hoshi remains chewing at the burnt stub between his lips. And then, as if finally realizing Gonta wasn’t stirring from his position without some sort of acknowledgement, Hoshi gives a slight nod.
Gonta sits and tucks his legs under one another and watches as Hoshi grinds the cigarette into the grass, a misshapen halo of ash forming around the blackened butt.
“You don’t listen, do you? Though,” Hoshi- an ant scolding a mountain- takes in the colossal ravines and rivers of flesh and sweat, “I guess you don’t have much to fear.”
“Gonta can leave if Hoshi-kun prefers.” But Gonta hopes.
“Stay. No point in you leaving now.” Desperation? Perhaps not. Gonta was no empath.
Silence. Hoshi lights another cigarette. The flame flickers and Gonta flinches back, knowing the starved monster well enough. Fire left a trail of ash where once was life. Fire devoured, and fire lit the very thing that exhales toxins into Hoshi’s lungs.
Hoshi rolls the smouldering cylinder between his fingers pensively, causing the smoke to twirl through the air as if replicating the flight of a butterfly fluttering through summer skies. The smoke eventually dances by Gonta’s face and he barely manages to repress a sneeze.
Still rubbing at his nose, Gonta looks up to be met with the cigarette extended in offering.
As a gentleman Gonta is conflicted, smoking was a thing of venomous clouds of ash, yet he still fears denying what he takes as an offering of friendship on Hoshi’s part. He fumbles to pluck the dreaded sin from Hoshi’s fingers.
Gonta inhales deeply.
Sputtering and coughing and blurred vision. Hoshi puffs out a laugh from tar-filled lungs. Gonta grimaces at the taste of dead tobacco on his tongue, but determination pushes him over the boundaries of his comfort and he goes to inhale again.
Hoshi stops him. “I think you’ve had enough for today.” The utterance is as sullen as any other, but Gonta thinks he detects amusement glazing the words.
Hoshi stands, brushing crumbs of ash from his pants. Oddly, Hoshi slows his steps slightly for Gonta to catch up.
The unfinished cigarette remains; discarded and harmless without lungs to corrupt.
~
Glass was beautiful when shattering.
Kiibo’s metallic limbs crash through the glass screen, crystal shards glitter in the synthetic light and the fragments hail down into the pool of liquid tinging Gonta’s bare feet a watered-down crimson.
Humans when shattering were decidedly not.
Toujou’s face looms; panicstricken and feral.
Only bones remained.
Toujou is punished.
Gonta isn’t quite as sorry as he’d like to be.
~
Hoshi’s forgotten.
It’s inevitable, really. Hoshi had treaded so lightly that there’s hardly anyone left to remember. He hadn’t been the first victim - and if Gonta broke free of his ignorance, perhaps he’d admit that he likely wasn’t the last.
Hoshi is forgotten, but Gonta clings to what little he knows of him. Gonta lists what he can, but he’s always been an idiot and there’s only so much his weak mind can store.
It isn’t enough. Pieces of information slip through his fingers. The smallest of details escaping with ease.
But Gonta would remember when no one else would. Gonta would try.
But how was he supposed to remember a name that he could not even ink?
Realization dawns. Had Gonta ever been Hoshi’s friend at all?
No. He shakes off the thought. Gonta would not forget.
He reaches for the notebook; his determination stoked and burning bright. He fumbles with the pen and finally settles with a vice grip around the base.
His movements are as awkward and uncoordinated as a newborn's flailing steps. This shows in the legibility of the markings scratched into the notebook’s pages.
Gonta knew nothing of writing, let alone the penning of a name he’d never read. Nevertheless, he still stumbles through the symbols as he sounds out the syllables.
He’s on his fifth page - the others strewn around him on the grass, a wall of crumpled paper forming; another cage confining him - when Ouma finds him.
“Nishishi~ Is Gonta writing a love letter?”
Gonta’s reflexes are generally quick, but Ouma’s wily movements give him the advantage and he snatches up the scrap of paper and pen easily enough. Gonta can only watch in dismay as Ouma’s eyes flit over the page
“Eh? I know Gonta looks like a big oaf that can’t spell, but I didn’t think that he’d match his appearance completely. Looks like I was wrong!”
Though Ouma seems to lack some of his usual bite if examined close enough, Gonta still reacts like a kicked cub. Ouma takes the time to stroll away from the rattled giant, the folded slip and pen landing on the outskirts of the paper walls.
Gonta shakily retrieves the slip of paper. It’s folded and once he opens it he notices the corrections made. The correct kanji, or what he hopes to be, is neatly written beneath his previous pitiful attempt. Gonta painstakingly copies it line for line.
Once all is said and written, Gonta slides the letter addressed to the dead boy underneath a dorm door that would likely never open again. And he hopes that the letter bearing nothing other than a single name is enough.
The smell of smouldering cigarettes shifts past him as if saying its thanks.
~
A gentleman gave others the benefit of the doubt, especially when the suspected party was considered their friend.
But Gonta can hardly restrain himself from tearing at Shinguuji’s neck.
His restraint finally comes in the form of the scent of smoking tobacco passing through the court.
It isn’t worth it.
Gonta chooses to return to the safe confines of blissful ignorance.
~
Gonta is guilty.
He doesn’t understand. How could his body fail him so? He doesn’t want to understand.
He’s dragged away and his veins are pumped with synthetic venom. He hopes the others can live. Dying isn’t so bad if they live.
A metal claw pierces his chest.
Gonta is alive.
His body feels swollen all over and his chest gapes open, but he’s alive. And then the monster is set free to do as it pleases.
Gonta is scared.
The demon licks at his feet with scorching forked tongues and his fear roars through his partially emptied veins.
And then the stench of burning tobacco fills his lungs and he isn’t quite as afraid.