Chapter Text
0 0 6
A hazy feeling overtook him, sitting on a bench on the roof of what looked like a school. There was a high fence encircling it, with a figure staring out through the holes in the wire.
Shuichi called out to them. No response. They kept staring, hand gripping the fence. The sun was getting low, casting a burning glow over the scene.
“Please, answer me,” he called out again. “I need to know!” But what was it he needed to know? Whatever it was, a sense of desperation filled his heart as he tried to get the other person’s attention.
“There is nothing to tell you,” the person finally responded. “I hold no secrets from you, not of a story that’s already ended. There’s nothing I could say that you need to hear.”
That answer was unsatisfactory. “No, you must know the truth!” He cried back.
The figure finally turned to face him, staring back at him with his own eyes. “Keep your promise,” the other Shuichi said.
His face turned to a blank mass of blurred distortion. Shuichi’s eyes opened back in the bed of the still unfamiliar room.
He assessed the room- still the same as when he went to sleep, though no light was filtering through the curtains. So everyone being alive wasn’t a dream, but whatever he’d just seen definitely was. The details were hazy, but he remembered the other him mentioning a promise. What promise? That could mean a lot of things. He’d made a lot of promises, most of them he wasn’t able to keep.
Looking back over at the picture that had so disturbed him when he first found himself here, he found himself smiling. Everyone was alive and happy in this world, that should be a wonderful thing. But then, why was he here? Or rather, why did he remember the other world? That was the big question, but he didn’t have an answer to it.
Speaking of questions, there was that of what Rantaro had asked to talk about. He’d said he’d meet up with him after his nap, but from the looks of it, his nap ended up running a bit long. He hastily sent an apology to him for oversleeping, and asked if he still wanted to meet up.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll meet you in the lounge,” Rantaro replied. Great, the lounge- wait, where was the lounge? He quickly texted Kokichi to ask him that.
The reply he received was fairly quick. “In the hall past the dorms, lots of chairs and shit there, why?”
He just said that he’d tell him about that later. Should he put actual clothes on for this? Probably, he felt weird still being in the same pajamas. And he should probably go ahead and eat too. Gonta’s food was probably too good to be shoveled down quickly and cold while he was trying to find any relatively casual outfits in his closet, but it hit the spot nonetheless.
Was not having any casual clothes a Butler thing? Cause he didn’t have anything less casual than button up shirts and dress pants. Ugh, why did Other Shuichi have to be so put together?
He had to admit, it looked pretty nice on him. After brushing his hair out a bit and fumbling with one of the ties for a bit, he could be mistaken for a functioning human being! It was weird to think of himself as pretty, but that was the best word he could think of at the moment. He was pretty, and he probably shouldn’t keep Rantaro waiting any longer.
With Kokichi’s description, he had a pretty good idea of where to find him, so he retraced the steps he’d taken that morning. And, sure enough, his suspicions were correct. Rantaro was sitting where he’d seen the forgotten laptop this morning, leaned over the coffee table, staring blankly at the wall. He couldn’t tell if it was an effect of his glasses or not until he got closer, but no, his eyes definitely looked distant. Not to get overdramatic, but they looked like crystalized fog.
His talent was Ultimate Clairvoyant, right? That surely had to be just as much of a falsehood as Ultimate Magician, and yet he certainly had the look of a fortune teller. Even as he turned to look at him, his eyes seemed to pass straight through him, like he wasn’t even there. He gave a glance to his hands before nodding. “Right, I asked to meet you here.”
“You did, yeah,” Shuichi said, sitting down. “Did you forget or something?”
Rantaro held up his hand to show a variety of smudged scrawl on it in various colors of pen. Notes like “meet Shuichi at lounge,” “give Tsumu her jacket back,” and “Ryoma is mad at me” went all the way down to his forearms, more of it obscured by a jacket that he wondered if was the one he was supposed to be returning. “I forget a lot of things,” Rantaro said with a hollow sort of smile. “Like, I forget what your talent is, can you remind me?”
A cold chill ran down his spine. Was he kidding, or was this some sort of test? Had he deduced something was up with him too? “I-I’m the Ultimate Butler,” he said, trying to sound confident and coming out all trembles. He fiddled with the tie again. Did he not look convincing enough?
He frowned and leaned forwards a bit. “No, you’re the Ultimate Detective,” he said with absolute confidence. “You… were close to Kaede… I think what she did, or at least what she tried to do, hurt you more than it hurt me, in the end.”
If he was chilled before, now his veins were filled with pure ice. “You- you remember that?” But how would he have known Kaede had tried to kill him, and been framed as succeeding? Even if he remembered, how would he remember what happened after he died?
“I remember… you told me you didn’t want to die, but you still apologized to me. You were kind, even then, when everyone was breaking down being told their fates,” he said in the same sort of matter of fact tone. “And then when they told you you’d be a survivor, you begged them to swap places with someone, with anyone else, to let them live.”
“I’m sorry, what?” He didn’t ever have a conversation like that with him, did he? When would he have? It would have had to have been before the game, but back then, he was just a devoted fanboy, wasn’t he? Why would he have been begging to let someone else live in his place if he was that kind of person? “Rantaro, I don’t remember that…”
Rantaro looked at him for a moment and blinked. “I needed to tell you something, right?” He asked. “Sorry, my head’s been all over the place lately. It’s even worse than usual. Uh… Shuichi… Shuichi…”
He pulled his sleeve down and studied the scrawl on his arm. “Oh! ‘I overheard Shuichi talking about the Killing Game!’ That was it!”
“So you know about that?” Shuichi felt lost, but Rantaro was looking at him with an eager grin. “But… how? No one else seems to remember…”
“That’s right,” Rantaro said with a nod. “No one but you and me, at least. I remember parts of it but… everything is hazy. I can’t remember much of anything that’s going on, I lose my place often. They call me the Ultimate Clairvoyant because what I remember from the other world lets me predict things that might happen here. I can tell when people are going to be good friends, or see certain events I shouldn’t know about. Dunno how really it works, sometimes I just space out and see weird stuff.”
Something about that confession chilled him to the bone. Was that what would become of him now that he knew? Or was it something different with both of them? Maybe Rantaro was reacting to it differently because he’d been in two killing games? But then, where were the victims from the game he had been in?
“I’m sorry.” That was all Shuichi could get out. “That sounds awful… I’m sorry that happens…”
Rantaro just shrugged. “I mean, it’s not the worst thing ever,” he said. “No one’s died here, and it’s better than being dead.”
“So you do remember dying? Then how are you and I both here, when I lived and you died?” Shuichi’s head was spinning. “Why do only we remember? Is no one else here real?”
“Nah, I don’t think that’s it,” Rantaro said, looking down at his arm. “I’ve remembered all this since I was a little kid. My parents, my friends, my classmates- everyone’s seemed real enough to me, and cared about what was going on, even if I didn’t tell them all the things I could remember. And, most importantly, you remembering makes it clear that everyone else must be able to as well.”
He blinked in surprise. “You remembered this for how long - wait, so I prove that everyone else here is the people we knew?” He supposed that, knowing now he wasn’t the first to remember, that did indicate that others were able to. “And you never told anyone?”
“Not really,” Rantaro admitted. “My parents were confused as to why I woke up not remembering anything normal one day, but they thought it was due to some illness. Other than that, no one but you knows.”
Well, that made Shuichi look a bit stupid, didn’t it? Rantaro hadn’t told anyone his whole life, and he told Kokichi about an hour after remembering, and attempted to tell Kaede a short while later. “Uh… hypothetically speaking, if I had told someone, would that be bad?”
Rantaro looked at him like a teacher would look at a kid acting out in class. “You told someone. Uh, I guess it depends- who was it?”
“Kokichi,” he said. “He didn’t leave me much of a choice, in my defense. And I attempted to tell Kaede and Kaito, but they didn’t believe me.” He could just leave the whole exorcism thing out of this.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Rantaro said, eyes widening in shock. “Ugh, this is bad. If they’re aware of things before they remember, if they in fact can, who knows how that will affect things?”
“I-I’m sorry!” Shuichi apologized. “I didn’t know anyone else would know! I was scared and alone and Kokichi cornered me, he knew something was going on with me and I didn’t know how or why!” He couldn’t bring himself to meet Rantaro’s gaze. His eyes started to sting. “I- I was scared…”
A deep sigh came from the green-haired guy, and he put a hand on Shuichi’s shoulder. “No, it’s fine. I mean, I understand why you would have panicked, you didn’t know how to act and people noticed. It isn’t your fault, but, please, can you not tell anyone else?”
Shuichi took a deep breath. The hand on his shoulder was reassuring, to say the least. “Thank you,” he said, trying to smile. “I’ll do my best to make sure no one figures out.” Probably not achievable, considering the whole exorcism thing could very easily go wrong, but he could try, at least.
Rantaro took a pen and began writing on the hand still on Shuichi’s shoulder. “Alright, lemme write this down so I don’t forget: Kokichi knows, Shuichi panics easily, tried to tell Kaede and… Kaito, did you say?”
“Kaito, yeah.” He tried to ignore the “panicking easily” part of that- he wasn’t wrong, and if he knew the full story behind that all, he’d be even less wrong. “Anything else?”
“Right, I wanted to ask what all you remembered,” Rantaro said, still writing. “The Killing Game, yeah, but aside from that?”
“The backstory they gave me, or my life before- I’m still unclear if everything with my uncle was real or not,” he mumbled. Nothing felt real, to be fair, but his alleged past least of all.
Rantaro nodded. “Hm, interesting. Can’t remember mine. So it does seem our cases are… different… there!” He raised his hand from his shoulder. “Got it all written down! Now hopefully I’ll remember all this!”
“Do you forget that easily?” That was more than a bit worrisome. “Is that gonna happen to me?”
“I dunno!” Rantaro exclaimed. “It’s not too bad, mostly I’m just really bad with remembering plans and details, but I’m pretty good right now. You should be fine, probably? Just be careful, I guess. Anyways, I uh…” He pulled his jacket sleeve back down. “Right, I had plans to play a game with Maki. Guess I’ll find out what game when I get there because I forgot to write it down! See you!”
Rantaro just sort of walked off, leaving Shuichi just staring at where he’d been. After all that, he was just going to flake out and not talk more? But, they were the only two people who remembered here! Was he that mad at him, or did he just not care?
He leaned forward on his hands, staring at the wall. Everything he learned just left him more at a loss. There was a lot he needed to know, but he didn’t know how to put things in order. Even for the Ultimate Detective, this case was going to be a lot to crack.