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We’ve been moving around so much in the past week that even I’ve lost track of where we are now. Brazil is my best guess, maybe Venezuela, but all I know for sure is that it’s tropical and yesterday it was so humid we could barely breathe.
It’s cooler now that it’s night, though, and every so often a light breeze swirls through the room, carrying the scent of the ocean with it. I’m not sure what sort of bugs, frogs, or night birds are responsible for the veritable cacophony of chirping and trilling outside, but it started up the moment the sun touched the horizon and hasn’t stopped since. It’s calming, I guess, sort of in the same way a busy subway is calming—like everything has an order to follow, everyone knows where they’re going, and you can just listen to it and forget.
And so I try to forget everything but the present, lying between sheets of soft cotton, my head resting on the pillow next to Shuichi’s. Down the hall are Kaede and Kiibo’s rooms, then Kaito’s, Rantaro’s, and Maki’s. The other half of the group said they were somewhere with red rock arches and not enough water, so, that makes all fifteen of us, alive and accounted for as of 7:27 pm yesterday. They’re fine. We’re fine. Nothing to worry about.
This place would be a paradise, if not for the armed guards stationed downstairs and all around the house, the pistols in the drawer of the nightstand, the survival bags stashed underneath the bed.
Almost two years after the game, and we’re still running.
We hadn’t slowed down since being dragged out of the simulation, in fact. We’d woken up to blaring alarms, lawyers and doctors (who were supposed to be helping us not to go brain-dead during the end-of-season revival process) dashing for the company’s helicopters, shouting about some kind of angry mob. One or two had slowed down to yank IVs out of our arms or remind us to keep breathing, but parting shouts of You were my favorite character, you know! didn’t mean much when, for example, the last thing you remember is—
Can’t move can’t move get me out of here
Don’t go please please please I don’t want to die
It hurts it HURTS—
I shove my hand into my mouth and bite down hard enough to distract my brain from remembering that it should be dead.
The intruders turned out to be a squadron from the Future Foundation, composed of participants of previous killing games—former Ultimate Soldiers, Spies, Psychologists, Doctors, and such. The real mob had arrived hot on their tail, a swarm of pissed-off fans who’d streaked their faces in blood and called themselves the Remnants of Despair—because of course they would do that. The Future Foundation had carried us, wide-eyed and convulsing and barely conscious, to their own helicopters, and taken off just as the Remnants burst onto the rooftop. We’d flown away in a hail of Molotov cocktails and have been on the run ever since.
So much for forgetting everything, I grumble inwardly and roll closer to Shuichi, hiding my head in the hollow of his neck. Somehow, even when he’s asleep, his presence is remarkably grounding. I close my eyes and match my breathing with his.
The tranquility doesn’t last, though. I’m starting to slip away when Shuichi shudders, a low whine escaping him—and then shoots to a sitting position with a desperate cry of “No, STOP!”
I sit up immediately, grabbing his arm. “Hey. Wake up.”
“Leave them alone,” he gasps. “I ... I don’t want to see it, please don’t....”
“Shuichi, you’re having a nightmare. You’ve got to come back now, okay?”
“I don’t ... I don’t....” He blinks a few times, seeming to take in the room around him, then turns to look at me as if just realizing I’m there.
“It’s over now, all right?” I tell him. “It’s over. It was just a dream.”
“You’re okay,” he sobs before burying his face in my chest, knocking us both back onto the mattress and squeezing me like I’ll disappear if he lets go.
“Ack—Suffocating a little, but yeah,” I cough. “I’m okay. What’s going on?” He stays quiet, though, so I drop the jokes and curve my arms around his head. “Shuichi, talk to me.”
“I had ... I....” Shuichi shivers, his breath coming in short, muffled gasps. “I had that dream,” he finally gets out. “We were back i-in the game, but it was real—and everyone—everyone was dead, a-and—and it was because of me—”
His heart’s pounding against my chest and I can feel him trembling. I close my eyes with a slow exhale, resting my chin on top of his head. And I lie to him.
“Shh-hh, everything’s fine, Shuichi. Everyone’s safe, I promise.” Nothing’s fine, and everyone’s as messed up as he is. “The game’s over, and no one’s going to get hurt anymore.” The game’s still scratching at the corners of our minds, it’ll never let us go. “Nobody’s going to get you. You’re safe here.” If what’s left of Danganronpa’s psychotic fanbase finds where the Foundation’s hiding us, we’re dead.
Shuichi’s breathing steadies after a while, and his vice grip around my waist slackens. I smooth his hair down—except that stubborn bit in the middle that does whatever it wants—and murmur a few more words of comfort. This is the straightforward part, the part he listens to. It’s the self-deprecation that invariably follows that I can’t fix as easily.
“I’m sorry I’m like this,” he whispers, his face still pressed against my collarbone.
I sigh at that. “Yeah, it’s really annoying how you respond in a completely justified way to severe trauma. Totally not understandable or anything.”
He shakes his head lightly. “I just ... I can’t stop thinking, and now I’m thinking too much, and....”
“Let’s talk about it.”
Shuichi hesitates. Then, predictably, “No, I’ll be okay. I just need some rest.”
His voice is always more strained when he’s lying. It’s painfully obvious. I shift one hand down to trace my fingers over his upper back, making him squirm in surprise. “Shu-i-chi,” I say. “If you don’t start talking, I’ll sing the sunshine song....”
“No, don’t, I hate that song,” he mumbles. “And I’ll be fine, really.”
I draw in an exaggerated deep breath. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine—”
He groans. “Kokichi....”
“You make me happy when skies are grey—”
“Kokichi, stop....”
“Something-something-something, I love Shuichi—”
“All right, I’ll talk,” Shuichi sighs.
I hum the last few bars of the song anyway, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of his head. Shuichi nuzzles closer in response, breathing deeply and too evenly, the way he breathes when he’s struggling to keep himself composed. Frowning, I bring my hand back up to the base of his skull, combing my fingers through his hair to let him know I’m still listening.
Even so, it’s a long time before he says anything, and when he does, his voice is barely above a whisper. “Do you think I’m a liar?”
The question gives me pause, but my mind immediately starts racing through the possible answers. A ‘yes’ probably wouldn’t help him feel better, and a ‘no’ would sound insincere, particularly since I ... have no idea what he’s getting at.
I take the safe way out. “Everybody lies. Does that make everyone a liar?”
“I guess it depends on ... on what they’re trying to hide.”
“Hmm. Well....” Part of what makes this conversation so disquieting is that I’m expecting Shuichi to resist answering a lot more than he is. This must really be bothering him. “Then maybe you should tell me what you’re hiding.”
Shuichi’s shoulders tremble and he swallows hard. “This is real,” he bursts out suddenly. “Right? We’re really here, this isn’t a dream? Or—or another—”
“This is real,” I cut in before he can get any more worked up. “We got out, remember? We’re both here, we’re awake, and this is the real world. You can tell because nobody’s trying to get us to kill each other.”
A soft exhale. “Okay,” he whispers.
“You’re safe, okay?”
“...Yeah....”
I force back a protest of you don’t sound too convinced and take a moment to gather my patience. “Are you thinking about the killing game?”
He doesn’t flinch, which is good, I guess. “No ... no, not so much.”
“How about the Remnants of Despair?”
He shakes his head.
“Are you going to make me keep guessing, or…?”
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “It’s hard to put into words.”
And so I let the silence stretch out as long as he needs it to, content, for the moment, to hold him close and breathe in the scent of his hair. This time, he doesn’t speak for long enough that I’m starting to wonder if he’s still awake.
But, finally, “Kokichi?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m ... I’m scared.” His voice wavers. “I’m so scared of ... of this world, I....”
“Tell me everything,” I whisper back.
I pull away slightly as Shuichi brings one hand up to rub the tears from his eyes, then the other, until he’s covering his face, crying softly. “I still remember my aunt and uncle,” he says. “And the officers we went on investigations with— and— and my friends from school.... I remember my first time in a courtroom, and how I used to go to the city library after class when I was younger, and a-all those news broadcasts about the meteors—” He breaks off with a tiny sob. “Y-you remember, too, don’t you?”
DICE. Breaking out of the back of a police car. Silly string-ing the Prime Minister’s office. The Hope Diamond heist. The sky stained red and streaked with smoke.
“Yeah, I remember,” I say.
“And then— and then we all woke up, and— and none of those people were real, and everything that happened— didn’t happen—!”
“Yeah, it’s terrifying,” I agree, trying not to remember how it had felt to have that particular bombshell dropped on me. How I’d buried my face in the hospital pillow and screamed myself hoarse through the whole night, the sound muffled enough that only the other occupant of the room had heard—Kaito, staring with empty and haunted eyes at the ceiling. Someone’s rookie mistake, sticking us in the same room after—
No.
Stop.
I shove down the memory and return my attention to the shivering boy in front of me. “It’s okay to be scared. They did horrible things to us in there.”
“Why can’t I forget them?” he cries, and his fingernails are digging so hard into the skin of his forehead that I have to pull his hands away before he can cut himself. “They’re not ... they weren’t ever real! None of th—And we aren’t real, Kokichi!”
“Shh, deep breaths.”
“That’s the lie.” His eyes are shut tightly, anguish fading into something darker and colder. “I’m lying about being okay, living like this. It’s a lie to think we’d ever belong outside of fiction. I’m a liar, because I’m the lie.”
“You’re not a liar because of what someone else did to you, Shuichi.”
“But I keep pretending,” Shuichi says. “Pretending to be a detective, pretending to be Shuichi Saihara—”
And he breaks down, curling in on himself like he’s trying to disappear.
His cries are always too quiet. The others scream their pain out into the open, or whisper indecipherable strings of apologies, or slam their fists into the walls until their knuckles bleed or one of the Foundation doctors drags them away. Shuichi cries like he’s drowning, like he’s lost the will to fight back against the waves crashing inside him.
I lift myself onto my forearms and reach behind him to wrap the blankets tighter around us. He looks so terribly fragile like this—even if he didn’t, I’d know my next words have to be chosen carefully.
“Even if you say you’re pretending,” I begin, and it already sounds stupid but there’s no going back now, “do you think being Shuichi Saihara is such a bad thing? As far as I remember, he’s the sort of person who would risk everything to protect his friends. Someone who gives people hope.”
Shuichi’s hands are wet with tears when I take them in mine again, and he won’t meet my eyes. “But he’s not real,” he says.
“Then who’s here with me right now?” I ask, brushing my thumb across his palm to smooth the tension out of his fingers. “The person who gave Danganronpa their body is dead. You aren’t him, and you never were. He signed the contract knowing it’d end up like this.”
“I know,” he allows, but it sounds automatic. I’m about to say something when he speaks up again. “Do you ... do you ever wonder if ... they’d still be okay with…?”
I can’t quite suppress a tiny scowl, thinking back to the salvaged audition tape the Foundation had shown me after I woke up, where I’d first seen the basket case who used to wear my skin. “They chose this, Shuichi. We never asked for it, so we shouldn’t feel bad about the consequences.”
“But that’s so....”
“So what?” I prompt after a moment.
“Is that really okay?”
“It isn’t not okay.”
He squeezes my hand in response. I get the sense there’s something he needs to hear me say, but that means there’s also something he’s reluctant to bring up. Not many clues to work with, though, since Shuichi gets cagey when he’s like this. I soften my voice and try, “There’s nothing we can do for them either way, so why worry?”
“But I ... is it even fair that we exist? A-and does existing make us real?”
“You’re getting a little philosophical....”
“I just ... I want to be more than ... a character.”
Ah. Now I get it.
I shift further down into the covers until our faces are level. “Hey, Shuichi?”
Finally, he looks up, and there’s so much honesty in his face that I’d say anything to make him smile again, to wash the suffering and anxiety from his golden eyes. It just so happens that what I end up telling him is the truth.
“If Shirogane really did create you,” I say, “then the only lie was that you were just a character in her game, because if that were true, you wouldn’t have been able to end it. Shuichi Saihara is real enough for me … and he’s incredible.” I take his face in my hands. “He’s the smartest, kindest, strongest, bravest, most beautiful detective I’ve ever met. And I love him more than anyone else in the world.”
He’s crying again; I brush the tears away from his long (beautiful) eyelashes and press my lips to his forehead. “You are not just a character,” I whisper against his hairline as he wraps his arms around me again. “No one with a heart like yours could possibly be fictional.”
The stress drains out of his shoulders with each shaky exhalation, and his grip on my shirt loosens. The heartbeat I feel against my chest has slowed to normal, and he’s warm and alive and real in my arms.
“Thank you, Kokichi,” he says after some time. “I love you.”
“Mm.” It still makes me smile every time he says it. “Are you feeling better, or should we go make some hot cocoa?”
“In this weather?”
“We’ll put ice cubes in it. And then toss it in a blender and make it into a milkshake.”
“You’d wake everybody up.”
“And they’d have a nice refreshing beverage waiting for them when they storm down to beat the tar out of me. What do you think?”
He hesitates. “Could you just stay with me for a while?”
I hum softly, partially in understanding and partially in response to the way he’s started rubbing slow circles into my back. “How about I stay with you forever?”
He smiles against my skin. “Even better.”