Chapter Text
Daiya
A constant beeping woke him up. It wasn’t like the beeping of an alarm, but more like the quiet, slow beeping of a monitor.
Daiya slowly opened his eyes to a dimly lit room. His vision was blurry, but he could see that he was lying propped up on his back in a bed and was covered in a stiff blanket. His left arm felt oddly cold while his right felt restricted. He tried to push the blanket away with his left hand, but something rubbed up against the blanket and poked the inside of his wrist. Now very confused, he slowly raised his arm out of the blanket and found an IV in his wrist.
He rubbed his eyes and took a better look at the room. There was a bag of fluid on a pole dripping liquid into a tube connected to his wrist to his left, along with two chairs. To his right, there was a heart monitor, which was where the beeping was coming from. In front of his bed were cabinets and a sink. In the bottom left of the room was a door with a large window beside it.
He was in the hospital. But that didn’t make any sense to him. He couldn’t remember why he would be there.
“I know, just let him wake up first, shit,” he heard someone say outside the door. The handle turned and Molly, his girlfriend, stepped into the room. When she saw that he was awake, she froze for a moment before quickly running to his side.
“Hey babe-” he started to say, but was quickly cut off from her hugging his head.
“Hey,” she said, her voice shaking. She sat in one of the nearby chairs and wiped her eyes. “I got here as soon as I could. I’m….I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” he chuckled, “Unless you were the one who kicked my ass, you have nothin’ to be sorry for.”
“I mean I’m sorry about Mondo,” she said as her voice shook more.
A dark unease sunk into him. He noticed that her eyes were puffy and red from crying and her red long hair was a mess. “What are you talkin’ about?”
She frowned. “....How much do you remember?”
“Molly, what the hell-”
“What do you remember?” she said more firmly, “About tonight?”
“Uh,” he started as the monitor’s beeping sped up slightly, “We were all at my retirement party. All the guys were there, so were you and Mondo. We were just talkin’ and hangin’ out….then Mondo challenged me to a race….”
Suddenly, he remembered. The race. He had been ahead and Mondo had driven into oncoming traffic. He remembered the paralyzing feeling of panic as he watched his younger brother weave through cars, some just barely. He remembered shouting for him to stop and speeding up. And he remembered….
“Christ,” he said as he closed his eyes, “That bastard owes me big time for this.”
“Daiya!”
“You know I’m kidding,” he said as he opened his eyes and grinned at her.
But she didn’t grin back. Instead, her eyes began to water again and she stood. “I don’t know if this is just you coping or what, but this fucked up shit isn’t okay.”
“I think I’m missin’ somethin’ here.”
“Daiya, tell me what was the last thing you remember before waking up here.”
“I remember getting hit and Mondo holding me.” He looked down. “I probably scared the hell out of him with the way I made it sound like I was dyin’.”
He looked up and flinched. Molly's face was pale and she had a look of shock on her face. Tears were running down her face, but she made no move to wipe them.
He looked around the hospital room, expecting to see whatever it was that was terrifying her. But everything looked the same. “You are scaring the shit out of me, Mols.”
She finally blinked and pulled her chair closer to the bed. She sat down and held his hand. “That’s….that’s not what happened. At least, that’s not what I was told.”
The monitor picked up speed. “What are you talkin’ about?”
“What do you think you got hit by?”
“A truck, what else would it fuckin’ be?”
She let out a shaky sigh. “No, you were grazed by a car. You weren’t the one who got hit by the truck.”
Fear started to claw at him, stealing his warmth and making it harder to breathe. “Wha- What do you mean I wasn’t the one….where’s Mondo?”
“Daiya, I'm sorry-”
He pushed himself up and pain shot through his right shoulder. It spread down his ribs, past his side, and across his leg. He became lightheaded and would’ve fallen backwards had Molly not help him lay back down.
“Don’t do that, you’re going to hurt yourself even more.”
“Where’s Mondo?”
“Daiya-”
“Where’s my brother?!”
“He’s….he’s not here,” she choked out, “He’s….”
“No, no….”
“He’s dead, Daiya.”
“There’s no….” Everything seemed to become disoriented and blurry. Sounds were distant and the air was thicker, like he was underwater. Nothing was clear, except for what Molly had just said. “There’s no way that’s true. I pushed him out of the way, he should’ve been fine….he looked okay.”
“The paramedics told me that you were the one holding Mondo when they got there.”
He couldn’t breathe. Nothing was making sense. Everything blurred more as his eyes watered. He thought back hard to the crash and tried to imagine what Molly had told him. But it felt wrong. He had no memory of that version. He could recall the pain of getting hit head on, he could clearly see the heartbroken look on Mondo’s face, and hear the fear in his voice. He remembered tasting his own blood as it ran out of his mouth.
“That’s not what happened,” he finally forced out, “I would’ve remembered my brother dying in my arms if that were true.”
“Maybe they got some details wrong, I wasn’t there, I don’t know what happened. But….” Her voice cracked. “But he is dead.”
“Did you actually see him?”
“Yes, they showed me pictures….they had me identify him. You were in shock and they couldn’t get you to say anything.”
“It doesn’t make any fucking sense, I would’ve remembered, I would’ve remember….where is he?”
“Still at the scene, maybe?”
He sat up again and muscled through the pain. “I want to see him.”
“Lay back down.”
“I won’t believe it till I see him.”
“It’s only going to make you feel worse,” she said as she tried to gently force him back down.
He shoved her away rougher than he normally would have and pulled the blanket away. He finally noticed that his right arm was wrapped up and his shoulder and chest were in a cast, but that did little to stop him. He brought his left wrist up to his mouth and haphazardly pulled the tape off with his teeth.
“Daiya! Stop!” Molly yelled as she grabbed his wrist before he could pull out the IV and shoved him down with her arm, “Someone, I need help in here!”
He tried to sit up again, but gasped in pain when the added weight on his chest made the pain nearly unbearable.
More people rushed in the room and Molly was quickly moved aside, replaced by nurses holding him down. He tried fighting against them, even though his struggle only succeeded in making his body hurt more. Too many tears blocked his vision, but he felt a needle prick his shoulder and something was injected into him.
Then his body slowed and stopped listening to him and he felt like he was falling. He tried to fight against it, but he relaxed and went limp in seconds.
Mondo
He sat up abruptly and quickly scanned his surroundings. He was on a towel in his black swim shorts, sunbathing on the beach.
“Oh right, field trip,” he mumbled as he laid back down and closed his eyes again. Some of the students from Hope’s Peak Academy decided to take a trip to the beach in order to cool off on a hot summer's day. The heat didn’t really bother him, he quite enjoyed it, but he’d never pass up a chance to get out of the school and relax.
“You are marked for death, mortal!”
“Pass it to me, I’m open!”
“Oh great, there’s sand in my hair!”
“Don’t quit on me now! One more rep!”
Well, relax as much as he could around a bunch of high schoolers who were either loud, annoying, hormonally unstable, dead set on strangling someone, whiny, or a mix of all of the above. Not that he didn’t fall into several of those categories, but at least he was making a rare attempt at being calm.
“Mondo!” he heard Chihiro yell. He opened his eyes and found the Ultimate Programmer running over to him wearing pink and green swimming shorts, “Wanna help me and Chiaki build a sandcastle?”
“I’m kinda in the middle of somethin’.”
“In the middle of what?”
“Layin’ here.”
“Well, can you lay closer to our sand castle?” Chihiro smiled. “Taka said he’ll come over after he’s done counting water bottles.”
Mondo felt his cheeks get warm and he avoided Chihiro’s knowing look. “I guess I could come over.”
The smaller kid giggled. “You two are cute, you know that?”
“What?” He shot Chihiro a glare before smiling. “Almost as cute as you and Chiaki.”
Chihiro’s entire face went red. “I-I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
He chuckled and stood up. “Okay, I’ll chaperon your little date.”
“Shhhh! I-it’s not a date!” Chihiro whispered as he stomped his foot in frustration. “I just...wanted to spend time with her and….and it’s not a date!”
“Okay, okay, it’s not a date,” he said as he ruffled his friend’s hair, “Not so fun when you’re the one gettin’ teased, is it?”
Chihiro tried and failed to stiffen a smile as he started heading back towards the water. “Oh, go kiss Taka.”
Mondo quickly looked around to see if anyone heard that. Luckily, everyone seemed to be doing their own thing. He shook his head and followed. Why would he want to kiss his bro?
“Hey hey, Owada,” Chiaki greeted quietly once they approached her. She was wearing a white bikini with a short matching skirt, “Did you come to help us with our sandcastle?”
He looked at the lump of sand in front of her. “I guess I did.”
She followed his gaze. “I’ve never made a sandcastle before. Chihiro said that he’s going to teach me.”
“Y-yeah,” Chihiro stuttered as he sat down. He grabbed a plastic bucket and started filling it with sand. “You’ve gotta g-get the right amount of sand and pack it like this.”
She watched him before imitating him with her own bucket.
Mondo refrained from comparing them to kids playing in a sandbox and sat down next to Chihiro. He didn’t have a bucket to use, so he started using his hands to dig a moat.
“Like this?” Chiaki asked as she tipped over her bucket. Dry sand came tumbling out into a pile.
“Oh, sorry!” Chihiro said as he quickly gave her his bucket, “I forgot to mention that wet sand works the best. Here, try it with mine.”
She flipped the bucket over and carefully shook it until a bucket shaped sand pile came out. “I think I did it.”
“Y-yeah, that was perfect!”
“This is kind of fun.” She smiled a little. “Thank you for teaching me, Chihiro.”
The programmer's face went red as he tried to say something, but it came out as a weird mix of whines and squeals.
Mondo laughed before Chihiro shot him a look.
“Get back here, inferior being, and face the wrath-”
“Take the stupid thing!”
Mondo looked over and narrowly dodged out of the way as Kazuichi Souda and Gundham Tanaka ran past, the former being chased by the latter. “Watch it!”
“Hey!” Chiaki called out angrily, well, at least trying to sound angry, “Our castle.”
Their previous work had been trampled and reduced to kicked up sand and footprints.
“Hey, assholes!” Mondo said as he stood, “Get back here and-”
“And apologize to Chiaki!” Chihiro called out as he stood.
Damn, the kid had balls.
“It’s okay, you two,” Chaiki said as she started filling her bucket again, “Huh? What’s this?” She pulled something out of the sand and turned it right side up. It was a small turtle shell. Slowly, a baby turtle poked its head out and looked around.
“Aw,” all three of them said as they gathered around it.
“Hi, little guy,” Chihiro said as he gently pet its shell, “You’re supposed to be headed for the ocean.”
“We should probably let ‘em keep going,” Mondo said as he gently took the turtle from Chiaki. He made sure no one else was going to run by before placing the baby on a smooth part of sand. He watched carefully as the turtle crawled its way to the ocean. The tide picked it up and it scuttled further into the sea.
“You have done a great service, mortal” he suddenly heard beside him. He turned to find Gundham Tanaka standing against the sun. Even in his swimming shorts, he still wore bandages around his arm and his signature purple scarf blew dramatically in the wind. “I and the princess of these waters surely thank you!”
“Uh, you’re welcome?” he said as he stood, “Actually, you’ve got more you need to say. You and Souda need to apologize for trampling their sandcastle.” He pointed towards Chihiro and Chiaki.
“What?!” Gundham said as though he was offended, “Their childish art piece was a necessary sacrifice for retrieving the stolen princess.”
“The what?”
“The princess of the Dragon Palace, you fool! Had anything happened to her, even I, an immortal being of limitless power, might have struggled to stop the wrath of her father. You humans can not even comprehend how narrowly you escape death everyday!”
Mondo blinked a few times before shaking his head. “What the hell does that have to do with you two haulin’ ass a minute ago?”
“My enemy took captive the creature you just freed in a sorry attempt to woo the Dark Empress. Knowing that he had indeed captured a princess of the Dragon Palace, I gave chase. He dropped her as we ran by and she must have called out to you mortals in aid. You all, especially you, Owada, are very lucky to have been chosen by her. Your good deed shall not go unpunished.”
Mondo’s head ached similarly to when he had to do math.
“He said,” Chiaki chimed in, “That Kazuichi took the baby turtle to try and show Sonia so that he could impress her. Gundham chased him to free the turtle. While they were running by us, Kazuichi must have dropped the turtle and that’s when we found her. And I think he’s saying thank you.”
“Oh,” Mondo said as he turned back to Gundham, “Coulda just said that.”
“Cham-P!” Gundham called out. A large orange hamster popped out of his scarf and hopped onto his shoulder. “The Stone of the Dragon’s Sea, if you will.”
The hamster hopped back into the scarf, then returned holding what looked like a small green stone between his paws and teeth. Mondo wanted so badly to reach over and pet him.
“Thank you, my dark fiend,” Gundham said as he took the stone and handed Cham-P a sunflower seed, “I have decided to reward you myself, so I bestow upon you a precious gift that I would normally not allow a mere human to even gaze at. Behold, The Stone of the Dragon’s Sea!”
The stone was placed in Mondo’s hand and he took a closer look at it. It was the shape of a turtle. It was half the size of his palm and was carved out of some sort of green marble. It was smooth and worn down in some places, but its shell still had very detailed markings that he couldn’t begin to understand.
“Uh, thanks, Tanaka,” he said half heartedly.
Gundham turned away. “Rain can wear down mountains, just as easily as my Four Dark Devas could obliterate this beach. A storm has come for you, Owada.”
“What the hell is that suppose to mean?” Mondo asked, but Tanaka was already walking away.
Daiya
He had fought for this. As soon as he had woken back out of his medicated sleep, he had argued for them to let him see Mondo. Officers came in to talk to him about the accident, but he refused to tell them anything until he saw his brother.
“We have photos of-”
“I don’t want to see any fuckin’ pictures,” Daiya spat, “Put me in the same room as Mondo, now!”
It took a while, but the officers finally agreed to take him. It took even longer to convince the hospital, then Molly, to temporarily release him, but they could see that he wasn’t going to let up.
The drive up to the morgue was agonizing. Every bump or turn caused him pain. It wasn’t as bad as before, thanks to the medication he was on, but it was still enough to make him wish he were back in bed. The casts on his shoulder and chest only seemed to make the ride even more uncomfortable.
But once they arrived, he forgot about the physical pain. All he could feel was dread. He had known where they were going, and what that meant. And yet seeing the morgue in front of him through the car window nearly sent him into denial all over again. Hell, he was still in denial. That’s why he had fought so hard to come here.
As Molly helped him out of the car, she gave him a hard stare. “Are you sure you wanna do this?”
“No, but I’m gonna.”
She nodded and helped him walk.
It was cold inside the morgue. There was a weird staleness to everything. Daiya never liked places like this, especially cemeteries. He remembered going to one with Mondo for their mother’s funeral, and every year after to honor her. There was a similar staleness there, like the living were the ones intruding. It was a feeling that still sent a chill down his spine.
They were led into a room where something on an examination table was covered in a white sheet. It was definitely body shaped. It took everything in him not to turn around and leave.
“Last chance to back out,” one of the officers said as he grabbed one end of the sheet, “I think you can clearly tell that he isn’t getting up.”
“Just do it already.”
The officer nodded grimly and pulled back the sheet with a single pull.
It was Mondo. It was definitely Mondo. His skin was pale, his hair a collapsed tangled mess, his white jacket and shirt covered in blood, but it was him. It was his little brother on an examination table.
Daiya dropped and Molly barely caught him before his knees hit the ground. An officer pulled over a chair for him and sat him down. He could hear Molly trying to say something to him, but he couldn’t make sense of it. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t move. He could hardly breathe. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting to see. Maybe some chance, some small chance, that Mondo was still alive or could be resuscitated.
But as he reached over and touched his bloody cheek, he felt an icy coldness reserved for lifeless bodies. Lifeless. He was dead. His little brother, Mondo Owada, the only known relative he had left, was dead. There he laid, eyes closed as though he was asleep.
He wanted to shake him, to tell him to wake up, that this wasn’t going to get him out of going to class. He wanted him to wake up with an annoyed expression and complain about being tired. He wanted to thrash him around and tell him to never do anything as stupid as drive into oncoming traffic again, before hugging him and never letting him go.
“Mondo,” he called, knowing damn well that it wasn't going to do a thing. “Mondo. Mondo!” He actually did shake him, harder and harder, until Molly tugged his arm away and pulled him into a hug.
Reality seemed to drag him down into ice water, despite his girlfriend’s warmth. It didn’t matter how much he called out. It didn’t matter what he thought he remembered. His little brother….was gone. He returned the hug with his good arm and buried his face in Molly’s shoulder. He spent the next….he wasn’t sure how long- sobbing, yelling, cursing, and muttering to himself.
Eventually, he felt himself grow numb and tired.
“Shhh,” he heard Molly whisper as she stroked the back of his neck, “Easy.” She was trying to make her voice comforting and smooth, but she must have been crying along with him because she sounded hoarse. She felt shaky.
Or maybe he was still shaking. He tried to steady his breathing so he’d stop hyperventilating, but he only succeeded in making himself cough.
“I know this is a hard time,” he heard an officer say, “But we need to hear your account of what happened.”
“Y-y-yeah, yeah, just….” He sat up and wiped his face, “Just give me a few minutes.”
“Alright. Uh, these items were recovered from your brother’s person.”
Daiya looked over as the cop handed him a box. Inside were items he recognized immediately; some crumpled yen he had given to Mondo, a worn old wallet, a house key, and Chuck’s old collar. But there was one item that he had never seen before. It was a smooth, green, and marble stone that was broken into four uneven pieces. It looked worn and old. When Daiya moved the pieces closer together, he could make out markings that he didn’t understand.
And he could tell that it was in the shape of a turtle.