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Maki doesn't see it until later. She's a little busy trying not to die at the time, along with Shuichi and Himiko. Huddling under debris, the dusty, ashy scent of demolition in the air, all she can do is try to summon some modicum of calm in her last moments. At the very least, she can be content in the knowledge that her life meant something in the end. That's what she thinks, mindlessly grasping Himiko's hand next to her and drawing comfort from the fact that she still feels alive.
With all of that going on, it's no wonder she doesn't see Shirogane Tsumugi's final goodbye.
It's more than a little jarring when she finally does, on the beat up old TV in the beat up old apartment she shares with her friends. The clip comes on suddenly and without enough warning, a hook into some sort of special program analyzing the season. Probably figuring out how they can still find a way to salvage the show for another season, Maki thinks, because she's jaded like that. Even as she thinks it though, remote in her hand and ready to switch to a less upsetting channel, her eyes are glued to the girl on screen.
Tsumugi looks so sad like that, waving to the audience with Monokuma by her side. It's impossible, of course, for anyone to know what she might have been thinking at that moment. Maybe more impossible for Maki than most — she's never been the sort to delve deep into matters of emotion when she can help it, whether her own or someone else's. Still, she finds herself thinking that something in that expression looks like regret.
She watches, dimly aware that somewhere offscreen is herself, going through some of the worst terror she's ever felt, and Tsumugi seems a little eternal there, waving to nobody. Abstract, unreal. Going on and on in a vacuum, just like how she seemed to think about Danganronpa.
She's eternal until she isn't. Maki knows it's coming, of course, but she still shudders when the boulder comes down from nowhere, crushing her. There's blood on the camera lens. Maki reaches out and grabs a half-full plastic cup from the coffee table, downing last night's wine like a shot. She doesn't tear her gaze away from the television until the clip ends, transitioning to the talking heads ready to dissect the successes and failures of the season. Only then does she change the channel to some old drama, empty plastic crunching in her hand.
They kissed once, is the thing, and Maki doesn't know how to feel about that.
Shuichi and Himiko don't know. They can't know. The footage was never released — Maki's scoured the internet nearly every day to make sure — and she's sure as hell never said anything. She's not going to. How could she? How could she say 'yeah, Kaito died and the world was falling apart all around us, and I hadn't slept in at least two days, so I made out with the mastermind in a halfway caved in corridor'?
She can't. She couldn't. It's not like Shuichi going off and getting mopey and teary-eyed about Kaito, with her and Himiko going after him to lay there and pet his hair and remind him of all the happy things, of how Kaito wanted them all to be able to move on and have the lives they deserved.
It's not even like Himiko's semi-weekly meltdowns at night, the sadness that feels too big to fit in their shared bedroom. Her sobs make Maki feel like an alien, because she can't even begin to touch that pain, can't wrap her hands and her mind around it the way that she wants to. Sometimes Himiko wants to be held, and other times it makes her cry harder because Maki's too tense, doesn't fit against her just right.
She can't claim to know the kind of grief that makes you want to wrap your fingers around your sternum and pull. She especially can't understand it for someone like Korekiyo.
On further reflection, maybe Himiko would be able to empathize with her morbid Tsumugi obsession more than she previously thought. She still won't say anything though. She's just fine dealing with it on her own.
She could hear Kiibo's fight with the exisals in the distance, rattling the whole building right down to her bones. Tsumugi's voice in her ear was grounding, murmuring saccharine little nothings about wanting to make sure she's doing okay, and wondering how her investigation was going. Maki can't remember who kissed who first. It doesn't really matter. All that matters is the memory of the soft, full lips against her own, the long hair between her fingers, the warmth of a living body when her world felt so empty.
That's all it is, a moment. There's no reason for her to still be thinking about it, letting it get trapped on loop in her head.
She lifts a hand, lets her fingertips graze along her own lips in a ghost of remembered touch. Just as soon though, her hand drops back to the couch. If Tsumugi hadn't been the mastermind, if by some twist of fate all five of them made it out of that final trial and into the world, what would have happened? Would they have ever talked about the kiss?
Maybe not; that's the irony of it. The boring, innocent girl she pretended to be until she couldn't anymore...the girl she kissed in the darkness...that's not the kind of girl Maki is drawn to. She's drawn to the tangles, the complications. She doesn't know if she'd even still be thinking about it by now if it hadn't ended so poorly.
Maybe she's just lonely. Tsumugi sounds so cheerful (so fake) in all the pre-season material she has the misfortune of seeing.
The next time her death scene fills the stale air of the living room (because of course it does, the world still loves Danganronpa, still eats up the violence with both hands), Maki waves back.