Work Text:
"It takes me back to
Rooftop, moonlight silhouettes
Purple skies and cigarettes
I miss chasing down the morning light
And all those sleepless nights"
-Sleepless Nights (Ayokay)
Shuichi wishes he could say he’d had some big, heroic reaction after waking up from the simulation.
He wishes he had bolted awake and been overtaken by panic, had frantically struggled, had called for help. He wishes he’d fought tooth and nail, like he’d done in that horrible trial, that he’d once again stared despair in the face and wholeheartedly rejected it.
Instead, he just closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep.
He would have, too, if it hadn’t been for the symphony of voices that pounded in his ears. Shuichi was never very good at sleeping- if there was the slightest noise or barest hint of light, sleep wouldn’t come, no matter how much he tried.
The voices sound muffled, in a way that implied they were near him, but there was something between him and them. He can’t fathom what, though it wasn’t like that was saying much, considering he couldn’t think of a single reason he was in the situation to begin with. That thought made his head hurt, though, so he decided to focus on the first problem.
Instantly, Shuichi’s brain latches onto this new mystery like a starved animal. He takes a deep breath, trying to focus. Where is he?
Tentatively, he moves a finger, then immediately recoils from the sensation. It doesn’t hurt, per say, nor is it entirely unpleasant, but it’s such a mundane action that the way it feels so incredibly foreign sends waves of panic through his body.
It feels… real . Real in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time- in a way he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. He moves it again, feeling it fall back against the surface of whatever he’s laying on.
He can suddenly feel his whole body in high definition. Every slack muscle, lying against a cold, hard surface. The stiffness in his legs, in his arms. The way his neck feels like it’s slightly propped up, like he’s wearing a helmet.
He frowns (and twitches his finger at the sensation of it). His eyes are still closed, but he isn’t sure he’d be able to tell the difference anyway with them open. His whole vision is pitch-black.
He releases a breath. The air around him feels sticky and uncomfortably warm, a clear sign of being in an enclosed space for too long.
Suddenly, there’s a series of small click ing sounds, and then a hiss, before cool air comes rushing in. It’s weightless, of course, but to him it feels as if it weighs a million tons. His fingers clench together against the chill.
“Oh, no. He’s shivering. Does anyone have a blanket?”
That’s really what rouses him from his stupor. Maybe it’s the sheer impossibility of it, because of all things, it’s her voice that he hears, and there’s really no way that should be possible.
Shuichi had never really believed in an afterlife. He couldn’t, really, because then he’d never be able to live with himself as a detective, if he knew the bodies he was investigating were empty, soulless husks. No, it was easier to think of them as simply lifeless, just missing their heart palpitations or nerve signals. Nothing more, nothing less.
However, upon hearing her voice, his first thought is that this must be hell. He’s finally gotten his comeuppance for sending six people to the gallows, for failing to protect the others that died, and now he’s dead himself, rotting forever alone with the voice of a phantom to comfort him.
“Sorry, Shuichi. This’ll hurt a little bit.”
Yes, he concedes. It must be hell, because if there’s anything he knows for certain, it’s that Rantaro Amami is dead. He investigated him twice, after all- convicted two different people of his murder.
He shakes his head slightly, trying to calm himself down. He shouldn’t make assumptions like that, baseless ones without anything to support them. He’s a detective, after all.
Well, that’s not true, is it? He wasn’t ever a detective. That was just one of Tsumugi’s characters, projected onto his blank slate of a personality. Shuichi Saihara wasn’t a detective. He saw himself, after all, or whoever he was before Danganronpa, saw the boy begging to be the Ultimate Detective, claiming he would commit the greatest murder ever, saw the ugly words pulled from his own mouth. From Kaede’s, too, and Kaito’s.
It- he - doesn’t feel real. It felt like watching someone else. Not them, not him, not him.
There’s another click, and suddenly something tightens on his head, like it’s being painfully squeezed, before the pressure suddenly lifts. He feels hands under his head, holding it up as something- a helmet?- is pulled off his head, and suddenly light stabs into his eyes like a knife.
He tries to cry out, but his throat is dry and all that comes out is a croak. His eyelids slam shut against the harsh light. There’s a hum of sympathy, before a soft hand comes to rest on his cheek.
He wants to cringe away from the touch- he knows exactly who’s giving it, see, and she’s the last one he wants to touch him. But he can’t, and even as he leans into her delicate touch he knows he’s poisoning himself.
His eyes flutter open, squinting against the light. And, when he finally opens them enough to register anything, he sees exactly what he knows he will.
Kaede is smiling- she was always smiling, he thinks distantly, even when she was begging him to convict her- and it’s her hand that’s on Shuichi’s cheek.
He wants to be happy. He should be crying tears of joy, he thinks, because Kaede is here, she’s touching him, she’s alive and real .
But he’s not. In fact, all he feels is nausea, swelling up in his stomach like a hot iron, like someone’s grabbed his stomach and is twisting it with a cruel hand. Because when he looks at her, at her warm smile and golden hair, all he can see is a metal collar around her neck, her tear-streaked face and outstretched hand as she was pulled away from him, the pain on her face as she was forced to play a horrible rendition of Flea Waltz , the horrible thud as the spiked wall fell on her lifeless body, the carmine blood that seeped out.
Kaede was dead. That’s what he knew, what he’d always know. He’d carried on in the killing game in her memory for so long that now, seeing her alive and whole, feels wrong in ways that make his skin crawl.
“You did amazing, Shuichi,” She says. “We’re all so proud of you.”
Shuichi opens his mouth, though he’s unsure what he wants to say. Not that it matters; all that escapes his throat is a wordless croak that felt like it was tearing at his throat.
“I bet you’re really confused, right?” Ah, and there’s the other anomaly: Rantaro crouches down in his peripheral vision. Shuichi turns his head a bit to look at him. He looks just like he did in the game, like he hadn’t died, but Shuichi remembers all too well how that green hair had been crusted with red.
Rantaro smiles, and it’s so much like Kaede’s that Shuichi wants to throw up. It isn’t right, he shouldn’t be smiling- Tsumugi had smashed an iron ball into his skull.
“I get the feeling. Try to stay calm, okay?” Rantaro nods at Kaede, who picks up Shuichi’s arm and slings it over her shoulders. Shuichi wants to object, but before he can, he’s being suddenly lifted up.
Instantly, black spots crowd his vision. That bizarre feeling from before, the one of disturbing realness, like a blurry video that suddenly snaps into blinding focus, rushes back tenfold, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from crashing to the ground. Then again, it’s probably just Kaede who’s keeping him upright anyway.
If he were more conscious, he’d probably laugh at the irony. Kaede was always the one keeping him going, wasn’t she?
He doesn’t remember much of what happens afterwards. There’s a hallway, maybe, and a room, and the feeling of bedsheets against his skin. He’s aware of when Kaede lets go of him, though, and then he’s alone in the universe, face-up on a bed in a place he’s never seen before, surrounded by people he never should have seen again.
Sleep comes shockingly easy. It wraps around him like a vise, coiling its boney fingers around his mind, and as the world goes black it feels like he’s falling.
---
They explain it to him, the next day.
It wasn’t real. The killing game, the academy- it was all fake, a simulation. The real world was closer to the memories he’d been told were real, then told were fake- a world where talent was revered, a world that had fallen to ashes and attempted to rebuild itself again.
He wishes he was surprised. Well, he is , of course- being told that your entire world, the beyond horrific things he’d been through, were all fake, nothing more than zeros and ones, was bound to take anyone off guard- but his mind accepts it almost laughably easily. Of course it was a simulation, it says, why wouldn’t it be?
Perhaps he’s grown used to the world crashing down.
It’s Kaede that explains it to him. Kaede’s been hovering around him since he woke up, he’s noticed, and he wishes she wouldn’t. He still hasn’t been able to look her in the eyes, let alone speak to her.
It’s funny. When she was dead, there were a hundred-million things he wanted to tell her. Now that she’s alive, he finds that he has nothing to say.
She brings him food, as well, some bland-tasting soup that it hurts to swallow. He eats it nonetheless, because he’s too tired to argue and his stomach is aching. He drinks the water she tips into his mouth without complaint.
As soon as she leaves the room, he falls asleep again.
That’s how he spends the next few days- not that he knows for sure how long it is, of course, considering there aren’t any windows in the hospital room he’s been stuffed in. He wakes up, someone (usually Kaede, occasionally Rantaro) brings him food, he eats it, and then he thinks.
The thinking is the worst part of it. He considers asking for a book or something, anything, to distract his mind, but never does, and Kaede never offers. Rantaro does, once, but Shuichi shakes his head, and he doesn’t bring it up again.
He thinks about a lot. The sixth trial is often at the forefront of his thoughts- whatever Kaede says about simulations and lies and despair, he’ll never get over the sight of himself begging to join Danganronpa, desperate to take part in that sick, perverted twist on entertainment.
Kaede tells him, when he asks in a voice so quiet and weak he’s half-afraid she won’t hear him, that it wasn’t real. He hasn’t decided whether to believe her. Best friends or not (are the still best friends? Are they still friends at all?), Kaede had showcased fully in the game that she could lie.
He thinks about the sixth trial, mostly, but his mind sometimes dances back to the previous trials, memories so stained in tears and blood that he usually dares not think of them. The idea that they’re all alive, that everyone who died a horrible, grisly death back in the game woke up just like he did, makes something twist in his gut. He wishes it was relief, but it feels something more like dread.
There were some people in the game he’s missed dearly, of course, but there are also others he’d been glad to never see again. People like Korekiyo are up and walking, and he’s yet to ask Kaede whether or not he’s still… like that. How much of the simulation was a lie?
He turns over the murders and trials in his head, wondering what he’d have done differently, had he known the deaths weren’t permanent. Would he have cried when Kaede was snatched away? Would he have screamed from Kirumi to run? Would he have been filled with such a nameless, raw horror upon seeing the press, still dripping with blood?
The last one, at least, he’s confident he’d react the same way towards. It may have been the only murder where he’d never seen the body, but the hydraulic press, clasped shut and spilling out a waterfall of blood and a single sleeve, was the most grotesque thing he’d ever seen.
He isn’t sure how long it is- days, weeks, centuries- before Kaede opens his door one morning, soup and water clutched in her hands, and cautiously breaches the topic.
“We’ve been gathering every few days,” she says. “All of us, I mean. We eat lunch together. I understand if you don’t want to go, but… I think it would be good for you to see everyone.” Her face is earnest, but also sad, and Shuichi realizes that when she woke up, she would have been alone except for Rantaro. She saw everyone trickle in one-by-one, and yet was spared from witnessing the atrocities of the killing game firsthand.
He stares at the bowl of soup in his lap. He’s not sure if he can handle seeing the dead alive again; it was hard enough with Kaede and Rantaro. Hell, it’s still hard, and he’s had time to come to terms with them.
Kaede shifts uncomfortably. He reasons that he should probably be reaching out to her more, but something in their dynamic has changed, shifted irreversibly. He’s not the same boy she encouraged and then left alone in a deathly game of kill-or-be-killed, and she’s not the same girl who committed murder on a misguided hunch. They’ve both seen too much- him, the face of death, and her, everything that comes afterwards.
“Well,” she says, “do you… at least want to see the other survivors?”
He continues to stare at the soup for a moment, then nods.
Maki and Himiko are safe. Maki and Himiko have seen everything he has, and Maki and Himiko are supposed to be alive.
Once Kaede leaves the room, he stares at the wall and wishes he could fall asleep.
---
It’s the next day (he assumes, anyway), when Kaede and Rantaro appear in his room with smiles. They help him to his feet (his legs have improved enough in strength that he no longer needs to rely completely on Kaede), and he stumbles out of his room and into the hallway.
They lead him a short ways down into what appears to be a conference room. It’s not important- what’s important is Maki, sitting at the head of the table. Their eyes meet as soon as he steps in.
It’s with a dull surprise that Shuichi finds his eyes prickling with tears. He wonders why it’s this that causes him to cry- he didn’t cry for Kaede, and he didn’t cry when the world crashed down around him yet again- but something about Maki, wonderfully consistent Maki, is causing water to spill from his eyes.
Maki rolls her eyes, but he can see the hints of a relieved smile on her face. The door shuts softly behind him as Kaede and Rantaro leave.
Shuichi sits down next to Maki. Neither of them have spoken- there’s so much to say, and yet. And yet.
“Himiko! Are you really, really sure you’re ready for this?”
Shuichi stiffens at the voice, and he can see Maki do the same. The both determinedly look away from the door as it opens again. Shuichi is trying, really, but he’s not ready to see Tenko alive again.
“Hmm… yeah, I am.” Himiko’s voice responds.
“Well… if you’re sure…” Shuichi shuts his eyes as the voice of a ghost echoes through his ears.
“It’s fine, Tenko,” Himiko says. “You can go.”
He can only assume Tenko nods, because there’s the shuffling of feet and the sound of the door shutting again. He turns around slowly.
The three of them regard each other silently for a moment, and then-
“SHUICHI!”
Himiko practically throws herself into his arms- well, as much as she can when she’s barely more than skin and bones from staying stuck in the simulation for who-knows-how-long. It’s more of a collapse into his arms, really, but anything more than that and he probably would have collapsed himself.
He wraps his arms around her. She’s shaking, he notices after a moment, and from the wetness on his hospital gown he’d guess that she’s crying. It isn’t until Maki reaches out and wipes a tear from his eye that he realizes he’s crying with her.
Maki leaves her hand on his cheek and places her other hand on Himiko’s back, which is as close to a group hug as they were going to get. Shuichi closes his eyes and breathes, and for the first time in weeks (years? millenia?), his mind is silent.
---
It’s just Rantaro who returns eventually to lead him back to his room. Shuichi doesn’t know where Kaede went, and he doesn’t ask. Maybe he should. He still doesn’t.
The walk is silent, as Shuichi expected it to be. Most things these days seem to be. Maybe that’s why Kaede is so off-putting to him- her brightness, which kept their spirits up in the killing game, doesn’t fit well into this world of isolation and loneliness that marks the hospital.
As such, it takes him off-guard when Rantaro speaks. The boy sighs, using the hand that isn’t supporting Shuichi to push his green bangs out of his face.
“I remember what it was like, when I woke up the first time,” he says. “It’s hard, seeing the people you thought were dead alive again.”
Shuishi doesn’t turn his head, but he half-nods. He remembers Tsumugi’s words from the trials, that Rantaro had been from a previous killing game. He’s still not sure how many of her words were true, and how many were lies.
“So you were in a previous game?” He asks, and he’s proud that his voice is much more of a voice and less of a croak.
Rantaro nods. “My first game was more of a… practice run, to make sure the simulation would work.” He sighed. “Didn’t change the fact that I agreed to be put into a second one.”
Shuichi can hardly imagine that. It’s been hard enough adjusting to a world where the dead walk and the sky isn’t contained within a cage. The idea that he’d have to go through all of that again…
Suddenly, beside him, Rantaro goes still. Shuichi stops with him, glancing around the hallway for the source of the sudden stop, and locks eyes with Kokichi Ouma.
Kokichi is even smaller than he remembers him being. His skin is sickly pale, eyes surrounded by dark circles that put even his own to shame. His previously lively purple hair hangs limp around his face.
And yet, all Shuichi can think when he sees him is,
His eyes are purple.
It’s a strange realization, but one that won’t leave his mind. Kokichi’s eyes are a brilliant shade of amethyst, the color of lavender and grape soda and sunrises, large enough to see the way they shine even from across a hallway lit by horrible LED lighting.
He wonders how he never noticed their color before.
Rantaro clears his throat beside Shuichi, and the spell is broken. Kokichi glances at Rantaro, makes a motion with his head that might have been an acknowledging nod, then turns and walks away.
Silent. As everything in this world tends to be.
Rantaro gives Shuichi a tight smile, and the rest of the walk is without disruption.
Later, though, when Shuichi sits on his bed and stares blankly at the wall, his mind doesn’t think of trials and murders and hydraulic presses. It thinks of lavender and amethyst and sunrises, and he falls asleep with the taste of artificial grape on his lips like a phantom pain.
---
It’s another week or two later when Kaede finally convinces him to go to one of the communal lunches.
He walks there on his own, this time. Kaede hovers nearby, but she doesn’t reach out to support him. He can’t decide how to feel about that.
The cafeteria is a larger room. There are several round tables set up, and a larger table in the center that serves as a buffet laden with food. Not that he particularly has an appetite, of course- not with the corpses walking around.
As soon as he enters, Shuichi fights the urge to turn away and walk right back out. He’s spent hours preparing himself for this- it’s not like he can avoid it forever, no matter how much he’d like to.
Dozens of eyes turn towards him as soon as he walks in. He’s never liked being the center of attention, but it’s infinitely worse when almost all of the people in the room should, by all means, be dead.
It’s silent- or maybe it isn’t, maybe his ears are just ringing too loudly- but in the end, it’s Kaito who disrupts the silence. “Shuichi!” He says, gesturing towards himself and the table he’s sitting at. Maki is sitting next to him, looking expectantly at Shuichi, so he heads towards that table.
Shuichi sits down at the table to Kaito’s left. Kaede stares at him for a moment, then smiles and heads for a different table. He doesn’t know how to feel about that, either.
Kaito grins at him, and Shuichi tries very hard not to flinch. He tries very hard not to think of Exisals and spaceships and blood.
“Shuichi!” Kaito says again, slinging his arm over Shuichi’s shoulders. “How’s my sidekick been doing? You weren’t lost without me, right?”
“A-ah-” he stammers.
Maki places a hand on Kaito’s shoulder. “Let him breath,” she says, and Shuichi feels a rush of gratitude towards her.
Kaito retreats, giving Maki a blinding smile. “Sorry, Maki-Roll!” he says, and Maki’s face flushes slightly pink, but her fingers also tense. Shuichi supposes she’s not doing much better with this than he is.
Kaito turns back to Shuichi. “But really, you were okay, right?”
Shuichi nods. Well, he wasn’t exactly okay , but he’d survived, and surely that counted for something.
Seeing Kaito, talking to him again- it’s… not as hard as he thought it’d be. Maybe it’s that Kaito wasn’t dead for very long, maybe it’s that he’d barely come to terms with his death to begin with, and it’s certainly not easy , but… he’s okay. He’s okay.
His eyes travel around the room. It’s lined with people he last saw in the form of corpses, suddenly alive. Tenko and Angie are hovering around Himiko, looking just as bright as they did in life- at least, until you notice the wary and scathing glances they keep sending towards the other side of the room every few minutes, where Korekiyo sits alone, clutching a cup of tea with his long hair covering his face. Kirumi hovers around the edge of the room, seemingly unsure what to do with herself. Miu and Gonta are sitting together, getting on remarkably well, considering what Gonta had done to her.
So many people who should be dead. It’s terrifying, and yet maybe just a bit hopeful.
But there’s one person that’s suspiciously absent. Shuichi will never acknowledge the fact that he’d been seeking out a particular face, only to find it missing.
“Where’s Kokichi?” He asks. Maki and Kaito stop talking (well, it was only Kaito who was talking, really). Neither look surprised that he’d asked.
“Dunno,” Kaito says, scratching the back of his head. “He’s never had lunch with us. ‘Least, not since I woke up.”
“Good riddance,” Maki mutters under her breath.
Kaito frowns. “I’m kinda worried about him. He did some horrible things in there, ‘course, but… man, that’s an awful way to go. Even if he wanted it.”
Shuichi’s fingers tense. He keeps his face carefully blank. He doesn’t think of courtrooms and blood and metal.
Maki looks away. “It doesn’t matter what his death was like. He got you killed. He almost got all of us killed. He deserved to die.”
“Aw, come on, Maki Roll!” Kaito wraps an arm around Maki’s shoulders, pulling her into his chest. She splutters, her face flushing bright red, and Shuichi tunes them out again.
He’s not particularly surprised at Kokichi’s vacancy. He wasn’t the most popular person in the game, and most people here wouldn’t take kindly to his appearance. He’d probably be hiding too, if he were him.
“I’m gonna head back,” Shuichi says. Maki and Kaito nod, and he leaves the room with a heart of lead and feathers.
---
Life blends together.
He still sleeps in the hospital room. Kaede tells him that the nurses are monitoring his condition. (He doesn’t see the nurses, much, and Kaede tells him that the participants had wanted to be the ones to help each other get back on their feet.) He eats breakfast alone, and lunch with the other survivors. He sleeps.
Every once in a while, he sees a flash of unruly purple hair, but it’s gone before he can say anything.
There’s less to think about, now. He’s thought over the deaths so many times, analyzed them from so many angles, that he’s not sure he feels anything towards them anymore. Even the reality-shattering horror of the sixth trial has lost much of it’s effect, the previously horrifying memories faded into mere uncomfortable recollections.
He does register, however, that it’s been the longest he’s gone without seeing a bloodstain.
---
When he finally speaks to Kokichi, he’s allowed to walk around on his own.
Kaede’s been visiting him less and less. Maybe it’s the nurses wanting him to learn to be more independent. Maybe she’s given up trying to rekindle the dying embers of their friendship. Maybe it’s both.
Maybe he doesn’t care.
He doesn’t feel like going to lunch, today. There are on and off days; sometimes he’s desperate for a glimpse of the other participants, to know that they survived , they made it, they’re alive , and other days he can think of nothing worse. Today is one of the latter.
But he doesn’t want to sit alone with his thoughts either, so he decides to walk around the hospital. It’s a horrible place, really, all sterile white walls and ceilings that hurt his eyes.
As such, the shock of purple stands out.
He and Kokichi stare at each other. If anything, Kokichi looks worse than he did the last time Shuichi saw him- his eyebags are even darker, and his skin is so pale it’s bordering on translucent.
But his eyes are still purple. So maybe that’s why Shuichi isn’t looking away.
Seeing Kokichi so defeated-looking, so worn down- it’s such at odds with his in-game persona that Shuichi blinks a couple of times to make sure he isn’t going to suddenly twirl a strand of hair around his finger, smile his cheshire-cat grin, and say “Geez, you really thought I really looked that pathetic? You’re as gullible as ever, Shuichi!”
But he doesn’t. He just stands there and stares and looks like he single handedly crawled out of a grave.
So Shuichi clears his throat and says, “Hey, Kokichi.”
---
The silence is painfully awkward.
Neither of them were ever the best at filling silences. Kokichi used to fill them with lies and games, but now he’s silent, staring at nothing with a blank expression.
Shuichi glances at him out of the corner of his eye. Kokichi has always looked somewhat sickly- just a bit too pale, too small, too thin- but now he looks… exhausted. Fatigue is written in the lines of his face, the bags of his eyes, the limp strands of his violet hair.
It’s morbidly ironic. They’d aimlessly walked around the hospital, but in the end, they wound up in the simulation room. Fourteen pods, lined up like coffins, innocent sources of so much pain.
“Have you been doing okay?” Shuichi asks, because Shuichi Saihara is, above all other things, a fool.
Kokichi shoots him a look that quite clearly says that he is well aware of Shuichi’s fool status. He sighs, closes his eyes slowly, then beams.
“Just peachy! Everyone here hates me, but don’t worry, that’s the kind of thing I’m into! Well, that’s a lie, of course, but…” he trials off. The grin slides off his face like putrid oil.
“Right. Sorry.” Shuichi says. They return to silence.
He still remembers exactly which pod is his. He shouldn’t, probably, considering he was barely conscious when he emerged from it, but his eyes latch onto it.
“Why the lies?” He asks. It’s something he’s been wondering for a while now, maybe as long as he’s known Kokichi.
He shrugs. “Easiest way of making myself the villain. Everyone hates a liar.”
What must that be like? An existence, in which you’re always looking for the best way to be hated? A life built on sacrifices and games of chess?
If he thinks a little harder about it, Shuichi thinks he might be able to understand. Maybe that’s what scares him.
“So you’re not trying to be the villain anymore?”
Kokichi stares at nothing and everything. Shuichi thinks of kings and queens and lost pieces. The boy with purple eyes shrugs. “Nah. Guess I just got tired.”
---
They’re sitting on the roof.
Tasting fresh air in his lungs may be the best thing that’s happened to Shuichi since he came out of the simulation. He keeps taking deep breaths, relishing at the feeling of a breeze on his skin and non-air-conditioned air around him.
Shuichi had managed to talk one of the nurses into letting them onto the roof. He’d profusely swore that nothing would go wrong, and cited both of their improving healths as evidence. It was probably through sheer pity that she caved.
Not like it matters, of course. Any amount of begging would be worth this, Shuichi thinks.
Kokichi isn’t looking at him. He’s staring out at the sunset (the sky is red , here. Whatever tattered remains of detective instincts in Shuichi’s brain have come up with a myriad of theories as to how that particular fact came into existence. Or maybe it was always red, and Danganronpa stole that bit of common sense from his brain as well. They stole an entire past, so why not? He decides to stop thinking about it.)
Shuichi glances at him. His gaze isn’t wandering from the sun sinking low over the horizon, but Shuichi doubts that his mind is really focused on that.
It hasn’t gotten much less strange. The juxtaposition between the loud, antagonistic Kokichi from the game and this quiet, thoughtful Kokchi is off-putting, to say the least. Not bad, exactly, just… different. Everything’s different.
Shuichi follows Kokchi’s gaze to the sunset. It really is beautiful- a watercolor painting of warm hues, an offset to the sterile whites he’s become accustomed to in the hospital.
“I thought about you, you know.”
It’s Kokichi who breaks the silence. Shuichi doesn’t respond.
“When I was… you know. At the end.”
Shuichi gives a small hum. He stares at the sunset, the orange and yellow hues blending into an endless sea of blood red.
He hears a small shuffling noise from Kokichi beside him. He’s surprised Kokchi is willing to talk about this, and he doesn’t want to ruin the moment by looking at him. He’s content to just listen, if Kokichi is willing to talk.
“It was really dark. I couldn’t really think because of the poison, but… I remember how dark it was. It was hard to gauge how high up the press was because of that.”
Shuichi’s thought about it before. Of course he has. The horrific image of watching a metal sky descend upon you, of willingly laying there are letting death claim you- it’s hard not to imagine that when the boy sitting next to you has lived through it.
“Everything hurt so much, but I raised my arm up. Like that was gonna stop it.” There’s a huff of morbid laughter, and Shuichi’s heart aches. “And… I saw the bandage on my finger. The one that you tied when I cut my hand playing that stupid game.”
Slowly, carefully, Shuichi reaches out and brushes his hand against the back of Kokichi’s. He’s silent, but he doesn’t pull away, so Shuichi laces their fingers together. His thumb traces Kokichi’s index finger, remembering the feeling of lacing gauze around it in a worried frenzy.
It’s a long moment before Kokichi speaks again. His hand shakes slightly as they sit together under the crimson sky that’s beginning to fade into a deep purple.
“I was so sure I deserved to die. I’m still sure. I know I did horrible things, and death was the only way I could ever begin to forgive myself.” His hand shakes more. Shuichi clutches it tighter.
“But when I saw that stupid bandage, I thought ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die with him hating me.’”
It’s silent. Kokichi won’t say anything more. Shuichi knows this as well as he knows anything, in this world of half-truths and blood-colored sunsets.
But still he whispers in a voice so reverent it may have been a prayer, “I never hated you.”
They stay like that for hours, days, years, maybe, hands clasped together under the violet night sky as the last dredges of red sun disappear under the horizon.
Things aren’t okay. They’re a dead boy and a survivor, hated and beloved freaks of nature, fools playing a game of heroes and villains.
But, Shuichi thinks under a purple sky next to a boy with purple eyes, maybe they will be.
One day.