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“I missed you,” Izaya had said, a pained smile on his face as he struggled to lift himself up from the ground, and yet something about the way he looked at him gave off a wave of familiarity and a reassurance that this will all be over soon.
There was a moment in time in Shizuo’s life where he had a dream that felt so surreal that when he woke up the next day, he was half convinced that it really did happen, like some stupid, overused and fantastical cliche where a man mundanely gets turned into an insect, or a student likewise trapped in his own dormitory due to his inability to accept his life for what it was, except obviously, dreams were just dreams and they shouldn’t mean anything. However, right in this moment, it was like something had inexplicably drawn the curtains from his eyes to resurface something like a recollection, of the rapidly diminishing reality that would soon cease to be and the jarring realization that this has happened before.
It wasn’t until the sound of the city burning around him, the sound of sirens wailing in the background and the crack in Izaya’s arms that Shizuo had stubbornly refused to acknowledge, finally registered in his brain, that things started to really make sense. As the pieces crumbled down into place within his mind, he instinctively tightened his grip once - as if the memory of this lifetime would hang on just a little bit longer had he grabbed hold of it fast enough - and then let go of the vending machine to let it rest broken and unceremoniously on the ground next to him, walking hesitantly towards Izaya.
They exchanged words that neither would remember, and in one of their final moments of clarity, Shizuo crouched down to hold him in his arms one last time before a bright light that came from nowhere obstructed his view and with it, all other sensations.
When he next came to, Shinra was standing next to him and wearing his old (new) Raijin uniform that he (just bought less than a month ago) hasn’t seen in many years, talking animatedly about some guy (he’s already met time and time again) he just had to introduce Shizuo to. It was spring again and the start of the school year, supposedly his first, and decided to hang back when Celty drove up to introduce herself to him at Shinra’s insistence, curious to see if she’ll catch on on her own this time or if he’d have to tell her later down the line. For now, he just gave her a nod, and gave a small laugh when she punched Shinra in the gut for a particularly crude comment.
He’s lived this life before, he thought to himself, a stark clarity in his mind compared to only a fleeting feeling of deja vu he’d been not so graciously gifted in the last loop, and wondered absentmindedly if this would be the last.
He found it ironic, in a way, that no matter how many iterations it’s been, no matter how blurred and broken his memories have become with each passing loop, that the moment he stepped foot onto his campus, he’d always look up at just the right time to find Izaya looking back at him. A dizzying flurry of sakura petals and the sound of chatter, laughter, and tolls of the school bell echoed through his head, as Shizuo made a deliberate effort to run this memory like the tip of a knife through a never healing scar that encompassed the rest of their many other “firsts”.
Naturally, it wouldn’t be until lunch break that he would officially meet Izaya, watching across from the soccer field with Shinra right next to him, as he made quick work of dismembering the goal posts and breaking off a piece of the steel beam to fend off a group of third years who thought they ran the school like some disillusioned prince of a non existent kingdom. He spared him a glance, when the last of the third years had gone down and only the sound of Izaya’s clapping rang through the space between them, and suppressed a fond smile when the subtle awe in Izaya’s eyes slowly morphed into confusion. Every time the loop reset to his favour, Shizuo would hope that Izaya would also miraculously retain the memories they shared, but after the point where he’d first lost count of how many times it’s been, he’d stopped banking on the prospect too much.
The rest of it played out fairly similarly, like resetting a VHS tape and slotting it back into the cassette player, Shizuo found himself chasing Izaya down the streets of Ikebukuro once more, with a searing pain across his chest and tattered ends of his uniform blowing in the wind.
In a number of early loops that seemed to happen an eternity ago, Shizuo recalled asking for Shinra’s help - back when the whole concept was still new to him and he had no idea why he had all these memories of another lifetime that felt so real and so bizarre that surely there was no way it belonged to him. Sure, nowadays he’s grown accustomed to alternating between bouts of clarity and a lifetime of forgetting, thinking everything was alright, but it was nice sometimes to reminisce about how things used to be, or how it could’ve turned out.
They were tethered together, Shizuo was told, he forgot whether it was Shinra or his father that said it, but the point was that he’s stuck endlessly pining for Izaya (and vice versa) time and time again without an inclination of how to stop it.
“Like a red string of fate!” an adult Shinra (and Shizuo definitively remembered this particular line being Shinra’s) said with an intoxicated smile and a way too cheerful tone. “Or I guess in this case maybe a black string of fate? Either way, I’m sure it’s really romantic!”
Maybe the universe was trying to teach them a lesson or something, Shizuo had wanted to say, swirling the thought around in his head like the drink in his hand, and wondering whether Izaya’s mind drifted to him as well in his apartment in the next city over. Shizuo could already hear Izaya’s sharp laugh at the prospect of this being a divine punishment, much less an intervention, and he made a point to try and remember to ask him the next time he saw him near his death bed.
He’d like to think that maybe now he’d become more well versed in the mystical phenomenon known as, well, whatever the hell this was, just like how he’d like to think that maybe one of these loops would finally make it so that the thing that’s keeping them apart isn’t the constant, one-sided illogical distaste for the other.
There was more fiction surrounding the concepts of time loops and reincarnation than Shizuo had initially thought, if the back section of his school library was worth acting as a point of reference, and they all seemed to point to pretty much the same answer all throughout. They were largely revolved around some kind of hero having to accomplish a particular goal or save a particular person within these loops to finally get out of them, all the while forming weird one-sided relationships with people who won’t remember them the next loop comes, and learning some sort of weird moral lesson at the end of it.
Shizuo scoffed to himself as he eyed the shelves again in a separate lifetime and wondered if there were any new titles that differed from the ones he’d read before. He found it ironic, however, that most of these stories involved the same events playing precisely like clockwork, as though the memory of having done it all before would have no impact on the world. He felt an urge to write a note in one of the books, the one about butterflies and soulmates and reincarnation that he remembered learning in class that one time, and so he did.
He didn’t remember anymore what he wrote the first time, or the many yet far-between times that he’d written past the first, but when he walked through the set of familiar stories once again in this current timeline, he didn’t even think twice before penning down the words “happy reunion” or something equally as dumb just because he can, and just because it probably didn’t matter anyway.
Interestingly, as he left the library, he caught a flash of red and black uniform dart towards the back quick enough for him to miss out of the corner of his eye, and he shrugged as he gave him the benefit of the doubt.
He’s met his end time and time again in many different ways, with or without Izaya being there during his final moments as a witness or instigator. He doesn’t remember all of them - like with many events, it’s all become one big blur, like a badly renditioned montage - and thought to himself that if he were able to, then maybe he could avoid death all together, or at least have a chance at growing old for once. He supposed there was a chance he already had but just didn’t remember it, and then went on to wonder whether in that hypothetical timeline Izaya was right there with him like he was right now.
There was something painfully funny seeing Orihara Izaya, out of people, borderline frantically push himself off the ground with a panicked expression, like there was ever something so incredible that would break even his usually collected facade. Then again, Shizuo supposed, looking up from where he lay on the ground at Izaya, watching him shakily punch numbers into his phone and putting it to his ear, it wasn’t like getting Izaya to be sincere was particularly difficult for him to do anymore.
The ringing in his ears as the explosion echoed over and over in his head made it hard to focus, and there was something inside him that quietly resigned himself to his fate. He already knew that this wasn’t it, that maybe they’d have a better chance next time, and it was when Izaya suddenly dropped his phone in front of him that gave him all the confirmation that he needed.
“I’m sorry,” he heard Izaya say, repeat some more times, crouching down next to him. There was understanding in his eyes, but also pain, it was his turn to remember after all.
There was something warm in his hands, and despite the fact that he was losing a distressing amount of blood at a concerning rate (he silently debated whether removing the steel beam impaling across his chest would make his passing more or less painful), he tried his best to will his almost feelingless hands to squeeze back at Izaya’s.
He thought about saying something, a word of reassurance maybe, or something snarky like what Izaya would say, and he swore he managed to even open his mouth to start forming the words, but he slowly found his eyelids drooping and enveloping the world and his vision in white. As though he was merely drifting asleep, the last thing he felt was Izaya’s lips on the back of his hand as the memory of it all started to fade.