Chapter Text
The ebony of Kaede Akamatsu’s pupils held the same depth as the midnight sky, Tsumugi found.
The stars could also be found in her eyes in the form of sparkling slivers of hope, dazzling fragments of resolve. Her pink iris resembled galaxies that could only be found in the fathomless corner of space and time. They held the same effervescence, the same mousseux quality of a fine champagne, fizzing and blushing.
Or rather, perhaps her pupils were a rich soil encircled in roseate flowers, lush for those who either wish to preen or dispose of them.
Together, they had been laying side by side in the grass for nearly an hour. Kaede was stargazing, Tsumugi was gazing at Kaede, a star in the blue girl’s eyes. It felt as though she held all the time of the universe in her pocket, all the hours, minutes, and seconds in the world to admire the features of Kaede’s face. The blonde was too immersed in leering at the expanse of the heavens to notice
“Do you think it’ll be ten o’clock soon?” Kaede mumbled, turning her head in the grass to face Tsumugi.
As she did this, she closed her eyes gently, inhaling the earthy aroma . Her nose scrunched as the redolence flooded her senses, her freckles shifting over porcelain skin. As she exhaled, her eyes went half-lidded and a petite yet doting smile encompassed her face. Small strands of her hair were laced through the grass, blonde and viridescent plantation engaging in intercourse.
Tsumugi, in that moment, suddenly became very grateful she had begged her superiors at Danganronpa to fork over the money for real grass when designing the set. This singular moment made all the trouble and paycheck cuts worth it.
Tsumugi peered over with her pallid eyes. “Probably.”
Kaede sat upright, and the moonlight spilling over her previously silhouetted form; she was glowing, lustrous.
“Do you want to spend the night with me?”
Tsumugi jerked up from her previously sitting lax position, her shoulders tense and face hot. “I didn’t take you to be that kind of girl, like Iruma said -”
“N-Not like that! I just mean for, like, safety. Who knows what could happen to us alone?” Kaede tilted her face downwards, girdling her soft features in a veneer of shadows.
Actually, I know what’s going to happen because I wrote the script, which you are currently breaking Tsumugi thought, tentative and moderately panicked.
Was Kaede planning to kill her, strike her dead with a shot instead of Rantaro Amami? Had Tsumugi fucked up this badly? Were her masterful machinations unwoven with such graceful ease? She intended to give Kaede some freewill to keep the game engaging, but this… it was volatile. Mercurial. To put it simply, it could prove to be entirely unsafe and dangerous.
“Of course I’ll stay with you, Akamatsu,”
Thus, they set off for Kaede’s room, swaddled in the silence of night. Tsumugi knew she deserved death, and what better than to die at the hands of her Beloved, her Paraclete?
Neither were sure of where this was to go, yet Tsumugi was certain she sought whatever would happen next, whether it be sexual or mortal.
Upon entering her room, the blue haired girl elected to awkwardly stand in front of the door, for she was the clear epitome of suave. The blonde threw off her unbearably preppy sweater vest, pink and pristine, and then proceeded to undo her shirt buttons a few. Her fingers slid down her own chest with such elegance; it was stupid that somebody could look so captivating while unbinding fucking buttons, yet the sight drove Tsumugi into an amatory mania.
She then realized the implications of such an action, and her whole body sweltered. “Akamatsu, I thought y-you said-!”
“If you’re uncomfortable, then I could take off your blazer, too” Kaede interjects, eyes not meeting the other girl’s.
Tsumugi spoke naught in response, but there was no need, for a sort of nonverbal, psychic dialogue occurred between the two of them. However, she could be beguiling her own mind into believing this was so. Trust the veracity of no-one, not even yourself. Maybe Kaede did act with virtuous intent; after all, she has a demure nature.
Kaede pushed Tsumugi’s blazer down her arms, the piece of fabric falling the floor with only a faint sound as indication of its landing. Neither moved to retrieve it. Kaede took a step forward, Tsumugi took a step back, and then the wall was upon her spine, arctic in its acute iciness against the heat of her body, shielded by thin material. Kaede moved to unbutton the other’s shirt, careful to keep her hands raised as to avoid any contact.
After a few buttons were liberated, Kaede left her hands against Tsumugi’s chest, softly kneading them into the flesh just under the shoulders and right above the collarbones. She exhaled tremulously and glanced up with perfervid eyes.
The exchange made Tsumugi’s face redden. She hated when that happened because she knew when she blushed it wasn’t an even or cute spread of color, but it often manifested as vermillion blotches scattered over her face and neck and ears. She wanted to hide in that moment, for the air of the entire intimate dealing has lodged itself in Tsumugi’s windpipe, only allowing her breaths to be expelled in ragged and choked gasps.
Kaede brushes a piece of hair behind Tsumugi’s ear, her touch ghostly as her digits slid down Tsumugi’s jaw. She tilted the other girl’s chin downward, and maybe Tsumugi dreamed it whilst inundated in her state of reverie, but she would’ve sworn she felt a lean finger scuff her bottom lip.
I can’t feel this way. I can’t feel this way. I can’t feel this way about her of all people, I just can’t feel this way. I can’t.
Kaede retracts from the other in a rather taciturn, awkward manner. The action felt unnatural, it’s time was abysmal, and the most chilling fact of all is that it was performed only with the intent to sever anything between them.
Discomfiture permeated the room.
Kaede flopped onto her bed in an authentic way, staring at the ceiling. She kicked off her shoes and laid there, silent and exquisite, for a beat. She was an embodiment of pure saintly divinity, truly an embodiment of Plato’s forms and the trinity to which the human eye cannot do justice.
“You can join me, Shirogane,” She said to her unadorned, beige ceiling, the only thing in the room that could beat Tsumugi in the inherent dullness of its pathetic existence.
Tsumugi sat on the bed, diffident, when a spark of self consciousness ignited within her. She because starkly aware of how the way the bed gave way at her weight, as though she was intruding on a space that was meant only for Kaede’s presence. Of course, this self-consciousness couldn’t be made known, for that would only make the whole ordeal weirder, so Tsumugi topples onto her back as well.
She turned to look at the other girl. Kaede tittered in a breathy sort of way, but she didn’t drop her leer when she met the other’s ghostly eyes.
They laid. There was only Tsumugi and Kaede, Hell and Heaven, Creator and Creation, and everything in between them, all the humanity that could bestowed into a single man.
“It’s kind of cold in here isn’t?” Kaede’s sonorous voice speared through the silence as her hands crept over her shoulders. “I dunno, maybe it’s just me.”
“You can lay next to me if you want,” Tsumugi offered, her voice shaking minimally due to the concentration she was placing specifically into making her voice not shaky. Her jaw locked after she finished speaking, teeth clenched, as if to prevent any unwanted words from escaping the confines of her heart.
There was, of course, the fact Kaede could just crawl under the covers on her bed and be contented. However, she seemed more than acquiscent to curl up next to Tsumugi, one arm strewn over the other’s stomach, her head resting in the area between the shoulder and neck. Tsumugi felt a bit gangly and gawky bending her arm around the blonde’s shoulders, placing her hand on her hip, but Tsumugi convinced herself it was important for Kaede to stay warm. Or something like that.
Kaede exhaled airily, contented , and the breath flooded over Tsumugi’s neck. She ran an experimental hand through the blonde’s hair, pleased when she sharply inhaled as the other girl’s fingertips grazed her scalp. Her meek hand slithered to Kaede’s face, brushing the back of her hand against the curve of the other’s apple-round cheek bone. In a flippant act of temerity, Tsumugi brings her secondhand to Kaede’s neck, but the pads of her fingers barely prodding the tender flesh as though it were made of fragile glass or porcelain.
I want to touch her neck before it breaks, the mastermind thinks.
Kaede slid her hand down a few inches, pressing her palm into that little area of flesh beneath the hipbone.
Fuck, I bet she can hear how fast my heart is beating. What if she’s counting it in beats per minute? Could she use it as a metronome and play a little tune with it? Probably not. It’s probably beating too fast. Maybe she could play the third act of Hungarian Rhapsody number twelve. Fuck, Kaede Akamatsu I’ve never felt so in love in my whole life. I loved you before you even auditioned when we went to school together, and now I still can’t shake the feeling. I just want your warmth next to me, I want to feel you so badly.
Kaede almost incoherently mumbled, “I- Shirogane, I- fuck.”
In one graceful motion, she swung her leg over Tsumugi’s thighs, straddling the other girl. With one hand by the side of Tsumugi’s face and the other gently removing her glasses. The light fixture behind Kaede produced a luminescence that blurred into the edges of her face, and she looked angelic.
“This is okay, Shirogane?” She swallowed, looking away as she shifted her weight to rest on Tsumugi’s hips.
Something primal emerged from within Tsumugi at that moment, “Only if you call me by my first name.”
Kaede narrowed her eyes in an perfervid fashion, a contrast to the velvet quality of her carmine lips, round cheek bones, alluring eyelashes, and subtle curvature of her brow. Kaede’s complexion was florid in every meaning of the word.
“I want you, Tsumugi.”
“Kaede.”
Tsumugi chose that name, didn’t she? The nations will put their hope in her name. Why was it so hard to say now?
Tsumugi could barely push the word out before Kaede’s lips were on hers, her hands on her jaw, and Tsumugi felt like every one of her ribs were beaten in by a sledgehammer. This has to be the most delightful compassion she has ever experienced. The way Kaede’s skin gave in under Tsumugi’s hands, the manner in which the blonde’s hair draped over her own shoulders, the classical arch of her spine was so mesmerizing to witness.
Kaede tasted intoxicating, electrifying, and vaguely of bubblegum. Tsumugi hastily noted it as the most heavenly thing she’s ever had the pleasure of tasting. It imbued the vacuous cavity in her chest with a tingly nectar, as though her blood was a frizzante wine, her innards a bubbling soda. Tsumugi’s skittish fingers run down the other’s neck, the neck that would be splintered in a few short days, digits brushing against her pronounced collarbone.
However, that taste turned piercingly salty, a sharp disturbance in the haze of reverie consuming Tsumugi’s perception. As if on cue, Kaede began to tremble under the other’s touch, juddering as her breath hitched.
Tsumugi grew worried that she had done something to wrong Kaede, just as her worst fears stipulated she would. Disquieted and confounded, Tsumugi drew away. It was excruciating. The foot of space between them could have been a mile, and Tsumugi wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
The pianist leered at Tsumugi. Her visage was coated in a deluge of tears, blank before it crippled inwards. Slowly and mindfully, she brought her hand to her mouth, trying her best to choke as little as possible as she gently wept.
Kaede’s eyes were exceptionally severe, her pupils contracted, leaving a sea of pink to gaze at Tsumugi with… what? Agony? Ire? Melancholy? It was as though she was trying to strike a confession out of Tsumugi with her rapierlike eyes, perforating the chasmic depths of what’s left of other’s soul.
The blue girl felt her lungs collapse inside of her chest cavity. Her pulse made itself noticeable, drubbing under her skin as though the blood desired liberation from the living corpse it was trapped within.
“I’m the mastermind.”
Kaede’s expression was unreadable after the three words poured over Tsumugi’s tongue. The ebon centres of her eyes dilate, catlike. Her lips were pursed. She held her hands to her chest - was it an act of self-preservation or establishing distance?
“I’m sorry,” The mastermind continued, the words forcing themselves out between the cracks of teeth. “I know you probably hate me now, and I don’t blame you, but I was so obsessed with the idea of Her. She just - I don’t know - fuck! She became everything to me ‘cause I didn’t have anything else. I didn’t have anything to live for, so why not kill myself in some elaborate game, you know? But I don’t need Her anymore! I don’t want Her. She makes me sick. I only want… I only need…. I… ”
Tsumugi was on the verge of avowing “I regret everything,” but the words lodged themselves in her chest and stayed there, dully aching underneath her ribs. Words in sets of three always proved arduous to speak. It was easier to rant, go on a periphrastic tirade to which nobody will listen, where she can remain present and absent, alive and worthless.
Kaede studied the girl with pansy eyes, and an infinitesimal smile cracked over her lips. “You’re kind, Tsumugi, but I know that isn’t true.”
Immediately, a pang of annoyance resounded throughout Tsumugi’s body. How could one individual be so injudiciously trusting of others? Tsumugi literally handed a confession to her on a silver platter, only for it to be rejected? How could she not see what was quite literally in front of her: a hopeless situation with hopeless people drunk with their inclination to kill?
It wasn’t hard to convince a human being to kill, especially with some modifications. In colloquial terms, all one had to do was flip a few switches, push a few buttons, and place them in the perfectly stressful situation that would welcome a break. Technology with the ability to rewrite personalities was being used to produce homicidal teenagers - characters, that’s all they are - for the delirious public.
However, that annoyance subsided as soon as it came, leaving Tsumugi with a cold feeling that enveloped her impious bones. It was beautiful, in a pure and innocent way, that Kaede was so sanguine. Tsumugi may have planted the seeds, yet Kaede’s brilliant mind turned her drive towards the truth into something of her own design. Perhaps she was a mediocre rhetorician, yet that meant nothing in the wake of her raw tenacity.
Tsumugi spoke at a tone which she thought was inaudible. “I betrayed you for twenty silver coins, and you still forgive me?”
Kaede gazed wistfully; her eyes perished their initial edge. “Please don’t lie to me, Tsumugi It won’t make me feel better. Not to mention, I hate liars.”
She vomited the word out, a bane on her tongue, yet it was an act of self flagellation, if anything. The serrated glint in her eye indicated as such. Kaede was as teller of untruths herself, scheming her wiles in an attempt to reign victorious of an anonymous and omnipotent foe. To Kaede, perhaps, she’s battling the mastermind, Tsumugi herself, yet that fight proved futile in the face of her amatory affections. Kaede’s quarrel was more so a battle against a philosophy, an emotion, a disease, or a parasite. Intoxicating, alluring, and crushingly dismal, Tsumugi knew this ailment infested Kaede’s soul, festering ugly guilt and the propensity for blasphemy. It was a word not to be uttered; one loathed and simultaneously adored.
Despair.
Tsumugi saw through her with a type of pervasiveness, under her skin and skull, directly into her mind; she knew of all the sin that dwelled within the righteous and reckless rationality of Kaede Akamatsu.
Kaede could not win, and her dearest admirer Tsumugi could not either. The protagonist’s inevitable demise would act as a catalyst for corruption of her peers’ souls. To attempt to combat the system was, in and of itself, working for it; an act of self destruction was incredibly convenient for those seeking her ruin. Self-preservation would be an act of mutiny, yet it is far from anything Kaede would spare a thought of. She was too good, yet she was also too naive.
Kaede could not win, and the audience will relish in her failure as Tsumugi wished she could. Her death will be an act of regicide of Tsumugi’s own volition.
Interjecting the mastermind’s lamentation, Kaede enunciated, “Stay with me?”