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Kyouko longed to remove her gloves. They clung uncomfortably to the skin beneath them, wet with sweat and terribly warm. The true state of her hands wasn't anything that Makoto hadn't seen before during the few months they had been living together in the modest apartment, but nonetheless, habits brought comfort in a world that often didn't.
“Ah, good morning!” Makoto looked over his shoulder as Kyouko shuffled into the kitchenette.
While their cooking space had always been cramped for two, that morning it felt stifling, claustrophobic. The smell of cooking eggs made her stomach squirm.
Water... juice... something...
“Yes, good morning.” Kyouko forced a pleasant smile, reaching up to open the cabinet and taking out a glass.
Bits of glass cascaded across the floor like ice, cold as the blood swimming through her head and veins, the sweltering heat from seconds before forgotten. The ceiling above her floated further away, both rapidly and at a snail's pace all the same time.
Not again
Not again
Not again!
Kyouko heard herself scream before she hit the floor.
The darkness was no less suffocating than it was the last time. Enveloping her completely, heavy, oppressive, like a thick tarp thrown over a small animal in order to capture it.
Naegi-kun...
Makoto
The antidote had bought them so much time, she should have been thankful. But to never see his face again...
Kyouko struggled against the blackness, casting it off like a shed skin, swimming wildly toward the surface.
For a moment or two, the room she awoke in was dizzyingly unfamiliar, wholly different from the deck of the ship belonging to the Remnants of Despair. However, one thing did remain the same.
“...Kyouko?” That round face, only just recently beginning to lose its baby fat, hovered close, brows knit in deep concern. Only recently had the couple made the leap to using first names for one another, and every now and then, a soft flush still crossed Makoto's cheeks as he addressed her so intimately. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I...” Kyouko blinked a time or two, allowing her muddled brain to take in its surroundings. Makoto sat perched on the edge of their shared bed, still safely tucked in the corner of their bedroom, the pale lavender walls immediately quelling her fears.
She was alive.
“What happened?” she asked finally, burying her face in her hands.
“You collapsed in the kitchen,” Makoto explained quietly, as if he feared she might have a headache. “Thankfully, the cat had knocked the cushion off one of the chairs in the middle of the night, and it cushioned your fall.”
Kyouko sighed fondly into her gloves. It was pure dumb luck that Celestia II had tossed the cushion, and they both knew it. Makoto's own personal brand of dumb luck, which she loved so dearly.
“I think I may have caught a cold,” Kyouko admitted, raising her head to meet Makoto's warm gaze.
Makoto nodded thoughtfully. “Probably from Hagakure-kun. He's been spending more time helping his mom out at the hospital lately.”
Kyouko frowned. “No... It couldn't be from him.”
“How come?”
“Because I didn't think that idiots were able to catch cold.” Kyouko smiled weakly.
A soft snort escaped from Makoto before he fell silent for a time.
“I thought that...” he began, but his voice rasped, caught in his throat as if he were the one sick. He tried again, softly this time, almost like speaking the words might conjure them into existence. “I was worried that you had died again. My heart... I felt it stop and I was back there again, back in the final killing game. I was scared... I didn't want to lose you again.”
Limbs still shaky, Kyouko reached out a hand, placing it over top Makoto's and giving it a firm squeeze.
“I'm still here. We both are.”