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When Mai opens her eyes, it is to a white room.
How horribly cliche, she thinks, that it would be a white room after death. Ugh.
Then there is a sniffle next to her and she turns her head, idly wonders if this is what Maki felt when her sister opened her eyes on that beach.
“The fuck you looking at?” snaps Kugisaki Nobara who sniffles again, red-rimmed eyes looking back at her.
Mai blinks once, twice, three times in the span of a second.
“You.”
“What?” Kugisaki’s eyes fill instantly with suspicion. “What do you mean by—”
“Why are you here?”
One of Kugisaki’s slightly swollen eyelids twitches. “I’m probably dead, duh.”
Mai rolls her eyes.
“No shit,” she drawls, sits up straighter. She’s taller than Kugisaki but her legs are longer and so she doesn’t tower that much further above her now that they’re both sitting on the ground. “But why is it that of all the things for there to be in my personal hell that one of them is you?”
Now it is Kugisaki’s turn to look stunned. It doesn’t however, take her longer than a moment to settle back down into a scowl.
“Oh fuck off, you inferior copy of Maki-san.”
Mai snorts.
“Tell me something I haven’t known all my life.”
Kugisaki’s eyes narrow but then her shoulders slump a little lower. She tucks her knees closer to her chest, curls herself small. It looks kind of pathetic but not like in a gross way. It sits uncomfortably with Mai because it reminds her a bit of Kasumi and the way she’d gripped that very first paycheck for twenty thousand yen like it had been a lifeline.
Mai sighs. She’s not the kind of person who would ask and she knows that Kugisaki might be the kind of person to talk about it, but not to her. No, not to Mai. Not to Mai who insulted her and shot her.
But Kugisaki looks very dejected and it stirs something inside her. Mai has no idea how the other girl died but she hopes it wasn’t too painful.
“Do you,” she tries like Momo once did for her, “want to talk?”
Kugisaki’s gaze snaps up and the suspicion in them is clear even if Mai hasn’t spent much time looking at those brown eyes.
“What’s it to you?”
Mai raises her eyebrows. “Nothing. You just looked like you might want to talk.”
Kugisaki looks confused.
“Like,” says Mai as she crosses her legs and holds her hands in her lap, “you don’t usually shut up. It’s really weird.”
Kugisaki snorts. She rubs her eyes, takes a deep breath. “Fine, fine. What do you want to talk about?”
Mai shrugs. “Whatever you want.”
Kugisaki rolls her eyes.
“Wow,” she says. “Way to make me do all the work.”
Mai decides to not dignify this with a response but good gods above (are they still above if she’s dead?) this girl is so good at pushing all her buttons.
She simply grits her teeth and exhales slowly.
“Did you like her?” Kugisaki says a few moments later, uncharacteristically softly and quietly.
Mai raises her eyebrows.
“Maki-san,” says Kugisaki as if it wasn’t obvious who she meant.
One of Mai’s eyebrows twitches. “We’re twins.”
Kugisaki shrugs. “So? Doesn’t mean anything. You clearly didn’t like her when we met for the first time.”
Annoyance boils in Mai’s stomach. “And what’s it to you?”
Kugisaki looks at her like she’s seen something that Mai doesn’t want her to know. Mai’s jaw clenches.
“Nothing,” says Kugisaki. “Just wondering.”
Mai winces as the visual clears of Father’s head connecting with the floor, then her heart feels like it stops in her chest when she hears Maki’s voice.
“Mai, let’s get started.”
Her soul trembles. God, she misses Maki already like she never has before, not even when Maki had left her behind in the house—no, that had just been anger and frustration and hurt but they had only been separated by a series of trains, had still been under the same sky with the same set of stars.
Now, for the first time they are separated and she’s never had that twin telepathy nonsense or a pull in her heart or whatever, but the knowledge that they are not together and may never meet again sears its way into her bones and sits there and hurts.
Kugisaki sniffles again and Mai turns to her, startled out of her own thoughts. She'd almost forgotten that she had company.
“What?” Kugisaki mumbles, as if she could feel Mai's eyes on her.
A box of tissues materializes next to Mai’s hand and she holds it out.
Kugisaki takes one, blows her nose loudly, then crumples it up into a wad that she tosses into a conveniently-formed wastepaper basket.
“What are you looking at?”
Mai raises her eyebrows. Kugisaki doesn’t answer the unspoken question and so Mai shifts around for a fractionally more comfortable position. She wishes there were something to lean on here, like the wall that Maki had just leant her body on, wishes there were a blanket like Maki’s cape.
To be honest, she just wishes she had Maki but she has known for years that it would have come to this.
“You know,” says Kugisaki. “That she never really disliked you.”
Mai’s head turns.
“I know,” she says before her gaze falls to her own hands. “But Maki had bigger dreams and I didn’t. I knew that. She was never going to be happy the way I could have been.”
A sharp intake of breath. Kugisaki’s jaw is clenched.
“What is it now, short stuff?”
Kugisaki stares back at her. The fact that she’s ignoring the insult should tell Mai something, but what that is, Mai doesn’t know. She’s almost afraid to find out.
Kugisaki simply reaches for the tissue box again as her tears begin to water. “Fuck.”
“So,” says Mai a while later. “Why were you crying?”
Nobara’s eyes widen. She swallows.
“Why do you care?”
“If I’m stuck here with you,” says Mai. “There has to be a reason for it and it’s probably that I have to talk out whatever trauma that’s stuck in you.”
Nobara’s eyebrow twitches.
“And why the hell wouldn’t it be me having to do that with you?”
Mai simply rolls her eyes. “You? Comfort me? Hah.”
“What?” snaps Nobara as annoyance roils within her. “You think I can’t?”
“Oh no, no.” Mai waves a hand. “I’d just really rather not see you try.”
Nobara glares at her.
Mai sighs. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to talk to you. Maki seems to cope just fine and I’m sure I could do anything that gorilla sets her mind to. Oh wait. It’s Panda that’s the gorilla, isn’t it? How confusing.”
Nobara’s eyebrows twitch.
“Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike you?”
Mai’s eyelids flutter. “Rest assured,” she says. “The feeling is mutual.”
“Bitch,” snaps Nobara.
“You’re one to talk,” Mai sniffs. “Now c’mon. Spill already.”
“Hah?”
Mai rolls her eyes. “I don’t want to be here forever. C’mon. Tell me why you’re sad. We’ll talk through it and then I can finally leave.” She casts a look at Nobara. “I don’t think either of us want to be here forever.”
Nobara swallows. Her eyes flick to the floor.
“You… don’t want to watch?”
Mai’s eyes widen. Then she squares her shoulders, casts a disdainful glance at Nobara. “Not with you as running commentary.”
Nobara glares back.
“You liked her, didn’t you?” says Mai.
“Uhm,” says Nobara.
Mai snorts but this time there is no bitterness behind it. “It’s not surprising. She’s not hard to love.”
“Yeah,” Nobara glances down, where the hole had been that she’d watched all this happen. “She’s not.”
She sighs.
“Don’t worry,” Mai says. “Maki’s strong. She’ll be fine. She’ll get over this.”
Nobara’s fists clench.
“Can you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“That whole pretending this doesn’t hurt thing,” says Nobara and she isn’t usually like that, isn’t usually completely without delicacy but something about Zenin Mai makes her want to get under her skin and pull out the truth, wants to crack that shell and dig that heart out and tell her it’s alright to feel even if it’s none of Nobara’s business and she’s the stupid one who cried on her own volition over two stupid sisters and their stupid inability to tell each other that they cared.
Mai’s eyes narrow.
“You know she’s hurting.”
Mai’s jaw clenches. She looks away. “We… were close,” she says. “Once.”
“Once,” snorts Nobara as it is an ache that bubbles up in her chest. “Once doesn’t capture it when she put so much into everything she did. When she did everything for you.”
There is a sharp inhale. Mai’s head snaps back to Nobara and her hands tremble.
“What do you mean everything?”
It hits her and knocks the breath out of her lungs
“You didn’t know,” says Nobara. “Oh fuck, you didn’t know.”
Mai laughs and Nobara wonders if she’s gone insane. Not that she wouldn’t put it past this madwoman to have completely lost it. Mai’s shoulders shake with the sounds, her hands go to her sides and not for the first time, Nobara wonders if she was dropped on the head as a baby.
She dabs at her own eyes. Fuck this shit. She’s never been one to cry over the sorrows of other people, let alone someone she doesn’t even really like but these two are just so dumb and so stupid and so—she grabs another tissue from the box. Fucking hell.
The laughter eventually dies down but Mai is turned away from her. Her shoulders shake still. What this is, Nobara knows with a sinking of her heart.
“Uhm,” Nobara says now with dry eyes.
If this were anyone else, she would sidle up to them and let them lean on her but this is Zenin Mai and Nobara has never gotten along well with Zenin Mai. Which, to be fair, might be the understatement of the century.
Instead she slides the box of tissues over.
A hand reaches out and pulls one out. The shaking eventually slows.
“Must have been nice,” Kugisaki mutters later.
Mai raises her eyebrows. Kugisaki is being uncharacteristically nice by making no mention of her red-rimmed eyes. It is, to be honest, very strange.
“To have a sister like Maki-san.”
Mai’s lungs fill with the icy cold of the ocean at the memory of the look on Maki’s face then it is sneakily exchanged glances on their knees polishing the floor, sharing the first morsel of a roll cake that no one wanted anymore in the back of the storeroom, huddling together under the same blanket during a storm and the warmth of a small hand in hers tugging her along that bring with them the calm of the rising sun.
She would have liked to do that again, she thinks as the blood aches in her veins. If that will ever be possible.
Kugisaki watches her.
“Yeah,” Mai mumbles after a few heartbeats. “Was pretty nice.”
Silence sits between them.
“I’m sure,” says Kugisaki even more quietly, “that she was glad to have you too.”
Mai’s heart trembles.
“Shut up.”
“Fuck you too,” mutters Kugisaki but there is no heat behind those words and they both know it.
epilogue
“So,” says Mai. “Why am I still here?”
“You’re asking me? I died like a week ago and I’m still here. You think I want to be here?”
“Oh right. You’re the one with the unprocessed trauma. What’s it—”
“Watch it. I can still beat your ass in.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the one who’s knocked you out. Twice.”
“With that stupid gun,” says Kugisaki. “Which you don’t have right now.”
Mai glares at her. It is annoying but Kugisaki is right.
“Can’t believe I’m stuck here with you,” she huffs.
“The feeling,” says Kugisaki with a sniff and a turn of her head, “is entirely mutual.”
Then her head tilts. “But seriously, that door behind you. It’s been there the whole time, probably. Wasn’t really paying attention but it wasn’t here before you arrived and now it is.”
Mai’s eyebrows raise as she turns.
There is no door.
She says so.
“No,” says Kugisaki even though her voice trembles. “It’s like, right there, dumbass.”
Mai’s eyes flick over emptiness. She swallows.
Kugisaki’s eyes grow wider.
Mai’s jaw clenches. Her hands clench into fists.
“Oi,” says Kugisaki. “Don’t you go feeling bad for me.”
“I wasn’t.”
Kugisaki snorts. “You never say what you’re actually feeling and she never says anything. What a perfect pair you two make.”
“Fuck off,” mutters Mai.
Kugisaki brushes invisible lint off her skirt as she slowly gets up. “Yes, yes. Was about to.”
She hears the footsteps, can barely bring herself to look. It’s dumb because this is Kugisaki Nobara and Mai doesn’t even like her.
“Hey,” says Kugisaki.
Mai looks up.
Kugisaki’s hand is outstretched as if it were over something solid. Like a doorknob. “Don’t keep me waiting too long,” she says and for a moment Mai doesn’t understand what that means.
“What?” she squeezes out, her heart clenching as she forces her voice flat. “Are you saying you’ll miss me?”
Kugisaki smirks. “In your dreams.”
Mai’s eyebrow twitches. Never mind all that. Kugisaki Nobara is just a royal pain in the ass.
“I do suppose—” Kugisaki’s smirk grows “—that Hell sure would be real boring without you there.”
Mai snorts.
“Give my best to Maki-san,” says Kugisaki. “Tell her that I said you two are stupid and I can’t believe I wasted my precious tears on your dumbassery.”
“I will not.”
“Yeah.” She smirks. “Thought you wouldn’t. I’ll just have to do it myself, I guess.”
Mai glares at her.
“And don’t worry,” says Kugisaki, her eyes soft and distant like she knows something Mai doesn’t. “Something tells me that you won’t be here for too long.”
Her hand moves. Mai traces the movement with her eyes.
“See you on the other side then.”