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Guilt. That's all Maki felt running through her veins as she let the small lithe body crumple to the ground. It wasn't right, because the master manipulator wouldn't just pass out after being choked. Why wasn't he breathing faster? Instead of throwing some stupid, hurtful remark, he stayed silent as his chest moved slowly.
His face wasn't purple or pink, it was as pale as snow. Everyday, he looked like he was on the edge of dying from malnutrition or some other illness. It was fucking terrifying to see him look so frail, like a child. Maybe the idiot was just faking it.
"Ouma!" The assassin growled with a huff, strutting up to the skinny boy and kicking him so that his face looked to hers. Looked would be the wrong term, because he wasn't there. She expected a reaction, but all she got was a slight whimper of pain. There was no way that the prankster was alright.
"Wake up!" She yelled, looking around at everybody else as she tried unwrapping the cloth from her neck with shaking hands. Nobody came to help her, not a single person. Saihara just stood there, with uncaring eyes and and he shrugged his shoulders, just like everybody else did at the scene.
She couldn't imagine people not caring about her, even if they recently came into her life. Maki didn't want to know how lonely he felt, how it felt for nobody to care and how it felt if nobody listened to you. And in one second, a wave of regret came her way as she looked at the boy resembling a porcelain doll.
"Come on, just leave him there." Kaito's voice rang out, except it didn't have the same warmth and kindness it always had. Even more regrets stabbed Maki's heart as she tried anything she could do to wake the boy beside her. A hand went on her shoulder, but she knew who's it was.
"It's not like he cares about anybody and nobody really cares about him, so why should we do something for him?" Kaito asked, looking into Maki's eyes with a grin as he tried lifting her spirits. Could she really disregard something she did, even if she was the SHSL Assassin?
Instead of listening to Kaito, she scooped the frail boy into her arms and felt how he huddled into the warmth of another person. Kokichi still shook in her arms, each shiver and shake making her feel like she was the main cause of his misery in the game. It was either her or Kaito.
"He's too light.." She came to a realization and looked down at the boy, then at his neck, seeing all of the bruises she caused. There was great purple and blue welts forming a river of color around his neck, slowly fading into the distance when it got lower and lower and lower.
Each step she took only made her feel worse, like she wasn't deserving of possessing the skill to talk to children as well as she did. This was a child in her hands, a cute seemingly-innocent boy, with a tendency to lie, but it was still a child in her hands. Everything about him screamed child, but even if he was a child, he was too skinny. She could feel his ribs through her thick uniform top.
"Maki, did you do that?" Kaito asked with a grin, looking at the person that nobody cares about, without a single drop of concern. The only people who ever got a glimpse into his world were dead, Amami and Gonta were gone. The people who got to see how he feels and how desperate he was are gone. Maki wondered how it felt, but she would never ask.
"Yes." She shamefully answers his question, but to her surprise, as she looks down, she sees a gentle smile dragged upon the pale skin. She would never love somebody like him, but it wouldn't hurt her to try to become a friend. And the next surprise she got was a pat on her back and an encouraging chuckle.
"Good job." His voice struck something in her heart, and as if she was back in her old days again, she realised why she feels weighed down.
"I'm going to take him back to his room, and I will watch over him for the night." She felt obligated to, even if she still hated the master manipulator a little bit. But she cared, even if it was less than a percent of care in her heart for him.
And she just walked away, looking at Kaito one last time as she descended into the dim halls with each soft foot step carrying her all the way to his room. She opened it with ease and she looked at everything with complete awe, red lines were connecting everything together as papers were scattered all across the floor. It was messy as hell and it looked like a homeless person lived there.
"M-maki..?" She heard a stutter from him, and it was absolutely heartbreaking. She thought it was her imagination, but when she looked down, she saw the grey glazed eyes of somebody who wasn't there but wasn't completely dead yet. He looked so pathetic.
He was weak and pathetic, and it was terrible. Maybe she could change it.
Maybe.