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There is something beautiful about death. The symmetry of a body decayed down to the bones left as a reminder of something much more whole. Skeletons for all they are different, have a tendency to look identical to each other.
Nagito isn’t dead yet. He knows this. Or at least, Hajime says this and tries over and over again to get them to believe it. They know better. While he isn’t quite dead the resemblance is already there. The others certainly thought that with their grimaces when he walks by. Or perhaps it’s just because of his demeanor and they can’t blame them for that. They hate themself after all, so it makes sense that the others should hate him more.
It could be the difference between the game version of him and them now. The game managed to capture highlights of his past self. Though they had none of those left now.
Hair, once a healthy chestnut auburn, stripped to the white often seen in those decades his senior. His hair was the first thing to change.
Their bones had already started showing before his hair, but he didn’t like to think about that.
There is no glow in his cheeks that all writers describe of the living. He used to have that. Though no one that knew him well enough back then to know that was still alive to say it. One of the few photos of him with their parents shows that there was a resemblance. Though almost all of it is gone now. Lost to illness, trauma, and decay. Just thin, sickly pale skin that clings tightly to his even more fragile bones remains.
Nagito briefly wonders if his bones would snap if he died. It would be fitting, they suppose. A worthless human shouldn’t be remembered even in their final state. Or maybe he is already bone and when he dies there will be nothing.
Hajime would be sad. Though Hajime is already sad. He doesn’t say it, but it clings to him as much as his regular suppressed apathy. A scalpel took his emotions from him; his anger brought them back.
Hajime stares at Nagito with that same expression. Pity, love, remorse, and sympathy. While Nagito’s declining state is evident outside of his ramblings, but Hajime’s is locked inside of his mind. Along with all the talents one could imagine.
Nagito would have hated and loved that once. That was their way back then. Everything was thought of in extremes and often both at once. He lived in contradictions. They rolled off of his tongue like the monologues of Hope. They don’t have the energy for that now.
He and Hajime share that as well. Apathy. Its cold hands clutch the two at all times. Hajime fights it. It’s too much like before that he can’t bear to think of it. He can’t escape it though and when he talks with the others, his friends not quite Nagito’s, he can see it on his face. The others don’t or pretend not to. Nagito has never been very good at pretending like the others can.
The others held to their ideas of harmony and peace back in the game. They held to their obsession with despair. Nagito had his own obsessions and things he pretended, but they never fit what he was supposed to do.
He hasn’t spoken to the others recently. After a conversation with Sonia about the likeliness of the ceiling falling in, everyone left them to his own devices. He deserved it. And even if it hurt sometimes he had Hajime to talk to.
They were much too similar really. Nagito figures that’s what drove Hajime crazy in the game. Though it sounds like a joke when they think it. Hajime going crazy. In their odd relationship, it was clear to anyone that Hajime was more akin to Hamlet than Ophelia.
Ophelia had a bad hand of cards. Though they suppose she dealt with it the right way. For all their attempts Hajime has stopped Nagito from even coming close. The next time he’ll give out flowers. His lover will appreciate the reference even if slightly macabre.
They roll over from their spot on the floor. He fell earlier when trying to exchange his book with a new one from the shelf. His not-quite corpse cannot move enough to get back up. So they wait for Hajime like always. Waits for the shock. Waits for the assistance, the lecture, the pity. That’s all Nagito can do until he’s so dead Hajime can’t argue. They wait.